
jS^ 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 






UNIT] 



.■ ,. OF AMERICA. 



POPULAR 
ANECDOTES 







The llunlsman. 



POPULAR 



ANECDOTES, 

INCLUDING 

INTERESTING AND INSTRUCTIVE ANECDOTES OF NOTED 

PERSONS; STARTLING INCIDENTS; AND STORIES 

ILLUSTRATING THE HABITS, INSTINCTS, 

INTELLIGENCE AND MARVELOUS 

FEATS OF ANIMALS, ETC., ETC. 



1^^ 



Edited by J. B. MeCLURE, 

Compiler of "Moody's Anecdotes," "Edison and his Inventions," "Lincoln Stories," 
"Heart World," "Origin of Familiar Things," Etc., Etc. 



CHICAGO: 
RHODES & McCLURE, PUBLISHERS. 

1881. 



TN 



1 1 



.M3Z- 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1880, by 

J. B. McCLURE & R. S. RHODES, 

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C. 



BIRNEY HAND St CO., JUNGBLUT, HENRICKS A CO., 

Printers, EUctrotypers, 

88 l-IFTIl AVKNUa 156 CLARK STREET. 



CONTENTS. 



ANECDOTES OF NOTED PERSONS. 

PAGE. 

A Chat with Gustav Dore 29 

Agassizand the Snake 18 

Anecdotes of the Emperor Napoleon 53 

An Anecdote of Gladstone 33 

A Zach Chandler Story 65 

Anecdote of General Lee 41 

A Reminiscence of Gen. Scott 38 

Anecdote of an English Admiral 20 

Bismarck at Home — How he wanted to be a Parson 42 

Colossal Fortunes 21 

Czar Nicholas and his Doctor 55 

Col. IngersoU on Temperance 37 

General Jackson's Death 57 

Governor Andrew's Prayer 39 

Gen. Jackson and his Old Horse ... - 13 

Great Men Testing Their Wits 63 

Gorringe Removing the Great Obelisk 51 

Horace Greeley Bathing in a Horse Trough 60 

How Sam Houston Happened to Go to Texas 62 

How Cromwell Managed the Musket 43 

Huxley to the Boys 24 

Joaquin Miller's Experience on Wall Street 54 

Lincoln and the Troublesome Politician 9 

Lotta's First Experience — Interesting Incidents , 44 

Napoleon I. and Talma 27 

Ole Bull's Debut— A Thrilling Story 14 

One of Anna Dickinson's Southern Experiences 59 

Some Great Things which Great Men have Disliked 64 

Stories of the German Emperor 34 

Stuart's Artistic Treatment of the Eyes 17 

The Cabin Boy and the Admiral 20 

The Czar Nicholas and the Artisan , 18 

The Last Words of Distinguished Persons 25 

Thurlow Weed's Stories of Horace Greeley 31 

Thurlow Weed and the Reporter 46 

Why a King Objected to Being Bled 13 



CONTENTS. 

STARTLING STORIES. 

PAGE. 

A Couple of Eggs which Sold for a Thousand Dollars 28 

A Curious Story o 

A Dive for Life 6 

A Dream Realized 33 

A Funeral Without a Corpse 21 

A Monster Clock 62 

A Peruvian Experience 22 

A Remarkable Blind Man 11 

A Singular Congregation in an Old Church 13 

A Singular Duel with Pianos 5 

A Singular Passenger Train 62 

A Shower of Lightning 19 

A Strange Vision 60 

A Walk Half- Way to the Moon . 39 

An Executioner's Revenge 59 

Bedstead Superstition in Germany 61 

Col. Synge's Dream 40 

Extemporizing in the Pulpit 26 

Goose-Bone Weather Predictions lO 

How the White Man Gained Everything 25 

How to Spell Isaac 26 

How He Lost his Wagon Wheel 61 

Josh Billings' Philosofee 63 

Lofty Towers 38 

Mark Twain's Visit to Niagara 44 

Naming Children in China 34 

Never Whistle in a Coal Shaft 35 

One Man Killed Four Panthers in Two Hours 30 

Red-Hot Ice 65 

Singular Ideas of the Cross 12 

Some Curious Statistics 32 

Startling Freaks of Figures 14 

Strange Avocations 54 

Strange Dreams 7 

Strange Dreams 51 

Strange Story of the Plague in Memphis 41 

Strange Verification of a Dream 29 

Superstition Among German Soldiers 24 

Terrible Adventure with a Rattlesnake in a Mine 57 

Terrific Balloon Adventure 56 



CONTENTS. 

PAGE. 

The Avenger of Mankind 23 

The Bottom of the Sea 42 

The Falls of Niagara Dry for a Whole Day 3 

The Future of the Republic 18 

The Marvelous Power of a Cyclone 50 

Two Little Pictures 64 



ANIMAL STORIES. 



A Boy's Fight with a Panther 43 

A Cat Story 64 

A Cat's Sorrow and Gratitude 46 

A Dog's Joke on His Master 6 

A Dog that was Pensioned by a Legislature 3 

A Duck as a Trout-Fisher 5 

A Famous Goose g 

A Fight with a Rattlesnake, and a Remedy for its Bite 35 

A Hen's Curious Hatch 27 

A Novel Use for the Cat 43 

A Parrot Scattering Railroad Passengers 59 

A Pretty Little Pet 26 

A Remarkable Dog Story 15 

A Snake Fight 58 

A Spider Story 54 

A Struggle with a Devil-Fish 55 

A Teasing Parrot 62 

A Wily Poodle 34 

Anaconda Stories 13 

An Elephant's Gratitude .' 5 

An Encounter with a Shark 57 

An Odd Fish 48 

Apparent Reasoning Power in Animals 29 

Battling with Lions 41 

Bismarck's Big Dog 56 

Capturing Orangs in Borneo 49 

Extraordinary Affection 50 

His First Tiger 44 

Hounds Outrun a Hare 51 

How a Deer Lived Over 3,000 Years 38 

Hunting the Kangaroo 24 

Lynching a Sparrow 12 



CONTENTS. 

PAGB* 

Miss Clinton's Crickets 14 

Music and Mice 33 

Peculiarities of a Massachusetts Swan 22 

Poisonous Fishes 53 

Rivalries and Jealousies of Birds 26 

Sagacity of the Canine 47 

Saw the Elephant and Died 52 

Snakes Catching Fish 23 

Superstition and a Black Cat 8 

The Boss Snake 60 

The Crows in Convention 7 

The Dog and the Picture 36 

The Fox, Crow and Rooster 28 

The Old Mastiff's Revenge 40 

The Pigeons of Venice 60 

The Prophecy of a Greyhound 63 

The Wrong Pig 37 

"Wiped Out — A Story of the Plains 19 



MISCELLANY. 



Curiosities of Animal Life 67 

Henry Clay's Dog 65 

Some Remarkable Statistics 73 

Some Singular Aversions , 71 





POPULAR ANECDOTES 



Anecdotes of Noted Persons. 



Lincoln and the Troublesome Politician. — A Laugh- 
able Story. 

Mr. James S. Brisbin gives the following interesting and 
amusing reminiscence of the great war President : 

One day not long after Mr. Lincoln issued his Emancipa- 
tion Proclamation, Mr. "Wade came in, laughing all over 
his face, and said : 

"Well, Old Abe has just done the sharpest thing you 
ever heard of. He has given out he has the small-pox, to 
keep the poHticians and office-seekers away from the "White 
House." 

The story ran thus : Mr. Wade went to the White 
House to see Lincoln, who had been ill. He found the 
President a little pale, but jolly as he could be. 

"Sit down, Wade. I am glad to see you. Oh, I have 
the funniest thing to tell you. It will make you laugh. I 
never did such a thing before in my life, and never will 
again." Then the President laughed until the tears ran 
down his cheeks. 

"Now, Wade," he said, "you are not to repeat this out- 



10 ANECDOTES 

side, for it would give offense, and it by no manner ot 
means comports witli the dignity which is supposed to 
hedge a President about. The doctor put me up to it to 
rid myself of a bore. I ought not to have done it, but I 
couldn't help it, it was so funny. You know I have been 
ill, and a great many people have wondered what ailed me, 
but none of them could find out. The truth is, I was wor- 
ried to death and talked sick pretty much by one man, the 
most everlasting bore you ever saw, who wanted an office. 
I knew he would come again as soon as I was able to sit up, 
and the doctor put me up to get rid of him by saying I had 
the small-pox. I only got out yesterday, and sure enough 
this morning he called on me. I had determined to be po- 
lite to him, but he staid so long the humor seized me and I 
sent for the doctor. Giving him the wink, I held out my 
hand, and inquired : 

^'Doctor, what marks are those on my hand?" 

"That's varioloid or mild small-pox," said the doctor. 

"Well," said I. "it's all over me. It's contagious, is it 
not, doctor?" 

"Yery contagious indeed," he replied, "and you should 
see no one. ' ' 

"My visitor, who had been getting more and more nerv- 
ous every moment, now could stand it no longer, and, ris- 
ing, said: 

" 'Well, Mr. Lincoln, I can't stop any longer. I just 
called to see how you were," and then he started to hurry 
out.' 

"Stop a minute. I want to talk to you," said Lincoln, 
"about that office." 

" 'Excuse me, Mr. President. You are not well this 
morning and I won't bother you," said he, shoving toward 
the door'. 

'don't be in a hurry. It's all 



OF NOTED PEKSONS. 11 

right, and if you are going to get the varioloid you will get 
it now anyhow. So you might as well sit down." 

" 'Thank you, sir, but I'll call again," he replied, fairly 
turning livid and executing a masterly retreat from the 
fearful contagion with which he supposed me to be afflicted'. 

"Now," said Uncle Abe, "it will be all over the city in 
an hour that I have the small-pox, and you contradict the 
story, but I want you to promise you won't repeat what I 
have just told you." 

Wade laughed until he was weak, and when he could 
get his breath sufficiently to speak he looked at the clock, 
as was his custom, and said : 

"Now for a little business, and then I will go." 

"Don't go," cried Uncle Abe, and laying his head in 
his hands on the desk in front of him he laughed until he 
shook all over. Presently raising up his face from between 
his hands he wiped his eyes and blew his nose until the re 
port sounded like the blowing of a horn. After another fit- 
of laughing he said : 

"Wade, you should have seen him, and how scared he 
was. I'll bet that fellow never comes back here while I 
am President." 

As might have been expected, hardly had Mr. Wade 
quitted the White House when he heard the President had 
the small-pox, and was very sick. Wade promptly contra- 
dicted the story, but that night it was telegraphed all over 
the country, and many people will yet remember the story 
of Mr. Lincoln having the varioloid during the war. 

Commenting on the report, Uncle Abe said to Wade : 

"Some people said they could not take my proclamation 
very well, but when I get the small-pox, Wade, I shall then 
be happy to say I have something everybody can take." 



12 ANECDOTES 

Gen. Grant's Narrow Escape at Holly Springs. 

Col. C. E. Bowman, Commissioner of Agriculture of the 
State of Kentucky, tells this unwritten story concerning 
Gen. Grant: 

At the time of YanDorn's raid on Holly Springs, Grant 
had his headquarters in the house of a relation of the Colo- 
nel's, a Mr. Heber Craft, now living in McComb City, 
Louisiana. 

One day at the dinner table a remark was made concern- 
ing the permanent occupancy of the town by the Federals, 
when Mrs. Craft, in a woman's characteristic earnestness, 
said, "Don't be too sure of that. Our boy c will be along 
shortly, and then we will see about the permanent occu- 
pancy." 

She had no knowledge of YanDorn's intended raid, but 
made the remark in a bantering style only. Great washer 
surprise to hear, in less than fifteen minutes afterward, that 
the rebels were in town and after the man on horseback. 
In his haste to elude them and get away on the train Grant 
left his uniform and sword at Mrs. Craft's house. 

The train was barely out of sight, having on board Grant 
and his staff, when YanDorn rode up to Mrs. Craft's house 
in the hope of bagging the federal commander and the 
whole party. He found Mrs. Grant, but not the General. 
Mrs. Craft, who was not only a true Southern woman, but 
a true, high-minded lady, hid the General's sword and uni- 
form for fear their capture, after what she said at the din- 
ner table, would make Grant suspect she had violated the 
rules of hospitality in attempting to betray him to Yan- 
Dorn. 

She said that Grant, on his return to Holly Springs, was 
surprised and greatly rejoiced to find his trappings safe, but 



OF NOTED PERSONS. 13 

he nor the chronicler of that raid never knew why they were 
not captured. 

Gen. Jackson and His Old Horse. 

Rev. H. M. Ckyer, in his " Reminiccences, " tells the 
following story of Andrew Jackson and his old horse 
*'Duke:" 

Though Duke grew feeble and almost helpless in his lat- 
ter day, he was not forgotten or suffered to be neglected. 
I have, in a walk with the Genera], more than OMce, gone 
to the lot which contained this living wreck of martial 
valor, and, while the old creature would reel and stagger, 
looking wistfully at his master, the General would sigh- 
ingly say: "Ah, poor fellow, we have seen hard times 
together ; we must shortly separate ; your days of suffering 
and toil are well-nigh ended." 

On one occasion, to try the General on a tender point, 
the writer of this article suggested the idea of putting an 
end to the sufferings of Duke, by having him shot or 
knocked on the head. "No," said his generous master, 
"'never, never; let him live, and, while there is anything 
to grow upon this farm, Duke shall have a part." 



Why a King Objected to Being Bled. 

A SINGULAR story is told, apropos of the stay of Prince 
Oscar of Sweden in Paris, concerning the objection his 
ancestor, Beruadotte, always had of being bled. His 
medical adviser, who was a disciple of Dr. Sangrado, in- 
sisted in vain, that it was necessary for his health; the 
Ejng was obstinate. At last a crisis came, and when Ber- 
nadotte heard that the doctor declined to answer for his 
life, if he would not consent to bleeding, he gave way. 
But before baring his arm, he made the operator promise 



l-Jt AXECDOTES 

tliat he would never devulge what was to be seen on it, 
and the doctor made a solemn vow, which he broke. A 
Phrygian cap, with the motto, "Death to Kings," was 
elaborately tattooed above the elbow. The dashing soldier, 
when he pricked this regicide maxim into his skin, never 
dreamed that one day he would come to be a King himself. 



Ole Bull's Debut- -A Thrilling Story. 

Professor Andeksox gives in the preface to the " Spell- 
Bound 1^'iddler, " a Xorse romance, a translation from the 
Danish of the following graphic account of the entrance 
of the late veteran of the violin, Ole Bull, before the 
public: 

Behind the Alps is the land of miracles, the world of 
adventure. "We do not believe in miracles ; adventure, on 
the contrary, is dear to us — we listen to it with willingness, 
and such a one as only happens to genius took place in 
Bologna in the year 1834. The poor IS^orseman, Ole Bull, 
whom at that time no one knew, had wandered thus far 
southward. In his fatherland, some persons certainly 
thought that there was something in him ; but most people, 
as is generally the case, predicted that Ole Bull would 
amount to nothing. He himself felt, that he must go out 
into the world in order to cherish the spark into a flame, or 
else to quench it entirely. Everything seemed at first to 
indicate that the latter would be the case. He had arrived 
at Bologna, but his money was spent, and there was no 
place where there was any prospect of getting more — no 
friend, not a countryman held forth a helping hand toward 
him ; he sat alone in a poor attic in one of the small streets. 

It was already the second day that he had been there and 
he had scarcely tasted food. The water-jug and the vioHn 
were the only two things that cheered the j^oung and 



OF NOTED PEK80NS. 15 

suffering artist. He began to doubt whether he really 
were in possession of that talent with which God had en- 
dowed him, and in his despondency breathed into the violin 
those tones which now seize our hearts in so wonderful a 
manner — those tones which tell us how deeply he has suf- 
fered and felt. The same evening a great concert was to 
be given in the principal theater. The house was filled 
to overflowing ; the Grand Duke of Tuscany was in the 
royal box ; Madame Malibran and Monsieur de Beriot 
were to lend their able assistance in the performance of 
several pieces. The concert was to commence, but matters 
looked inauspicious — the manager's star was not in the 
ascendant — Monsieur de Beriot had taken umbrage and re- 
fused to play. 

All was trouble and confusion on the stage, when, in this 
dilemma, the wife of Kossini, the composer, entered, and, 
in the midst of the manager's distress, related that on the 
previous evening, as she passed through one of the narrow 
streets, she had suddenly stopped on hearing the strange 
tones of an instrument, which certainly resembled those of 
a violin, but yet seemed to be different. She had asked 
the landlord of the house who it was that lived in the attic 
whence the sounds proceeded, and he had replied that it 
was a young man from the north of Europe, and that the 
instrument he played was certainly a lyre, but she felt as- 
sured that it could not be so ; it must either be a new sort 
of an instrument, or an artist who knew how to treat his 
instrument in an unusual manner. At the same time she 
said that they ought to send for him, and he might, perhaps, 
supply the place of Monsieur de Beriot by playing the 
pieces that must otherwise be wanting in the evening's 
entertainment. This advice was acted upon, and a messen- 
ger was dispatched to the street where Ole Bull sat in his 
attic. To him it was a message from Heaven. !N"ow or 



16 ANECDOTES 

never, thought he, and, though ill and exhausted, he took 
his violin under his arm and accompanied the messenger to 
the theater. Two minutes after his arrival, the manager 
informed the assembled audience, that a young Norwegian, 
consequently a "young savage," would give a specimen of 
skill on the violin, instead of Monsieur de Beriot. 

Ole Lull appeared: the theater was brilliantly illumi- 
nated. He perceived the scrutinizing looks of ladies nearest 
to him ; one of them, who watched him very closely 
through her opera-glass, smilingly whispered to her neigh- 
bor, with a mocking mien, about the diflBdent manners of 
the artist. He looked at his clothes, and in the strong 
blaze of light they appeared rather the worse for wear. 
The lady made her remarks about them, and her smile 
pierced his very heart. He had taken no notes with him 
which he could give to the orchestra. He was, conse- 
quently, obliged to play without accompaniment; but what 
should he play? I will give them the fantasias which. at 
this moment cross my mind ! And he played Improvisory 
remembrances of his own life — melodies from his soul; 
it was as if every thought, every feeling, passed through 
the violin and revealed itself to the audience. The most 
astounding acclamations resounded through the house. 
Ole Bull was called forth again and again. They still 
desired a new improvisation. 

He then addressed himself to that lady whose mocking 
smile had met him on his appearance, and asked for a 
theme to vary. She gave him one from "]S^orma." He 
then asked two other ladies, who chose one from "Othello" 
and one from "Moses." N"ow, thought he, if I take all 
three, uni*te them with each other, and form one piece, I 
shall then flatter each of the ladies, and perhaps the com- 
position will produce an effect. He did so. Powerfully 
as the rod of the magician the bow glided across the 



OF KOTED PERSONS. 17 

strings, while cold drops of perspiration trickled down his 
forehead. There was fever in his blood ; it was as if the 
mind would free itself from the body ; fire shot from his 
eyes; he felt himself almost swooning; yet a few bold 
strokes — they were his last bodily powers. 

Flowers and wreaths from the charmed multitude flut- 
tered about him, who, exhausted by mental conflict and 
hunger, was nearly fainting. He went to his home accom- 
panied by music. Before the house sounded the serenade 
for the hero of the evening, who meanwhile crept up the 
dark and narrow staircase, higher and higher, into his 
poor garret, where he clutched the water-jug to refresh 
himself. When all was silent, the landlord came to him, 
brought him food and drink, and gave him a better room. 
The next day he was informed that the theater was at his 
service, and that a concert was to be arranged for him; 
An invitation from the Duke of Tuscany next followed, 
and from that moment name and fame were founded for 
Ole Bull. 



Stuart's Artistic Treatment of the Eyes. 
The late Henry Shaw, the father of " Josh Billings," of 
Lanesboro, when a young lawyer in New York City, was 
very intimate with Gilbert Stuart, and used to pass much 
time with him. Those who were acquainted with Mr. 
Shaw can easily imagine how a gentleman with the paint- 
er's gifts would become attached to Mr. Shaw, who was a 
man of rare genius and one of the most accomplished and 
fascinating conversationalists that this or any other country 
ever produced. Stuart painted the portrait of a lady in 
New York, who was fussy, critical, overexacting, and nice 
to a degree that tried in the extreme his rather excitable 
temperament. The portrait was changed again and again, 



18 ANECDOTES 

the shade of the hair, the color of the eves, the expression 
of the mouth, the pose of the head, the arrangement of 
the drapery, etc. , were repeatedly altered at the suggestion 
of the lady. 

One day madam came in with several friends to see the 
portrait, and, as usual, she began to criticise, and said: 
" I do not think, Mr. Stuart, you have given my eyes the 
right expression." The patience of the artist was ex- 
hausted — he could stand no more. Walking up to the por- 
trait, and drawing back his fist, he thrust it through the 
canvas, and exclaimed in blunt but vigorous Anglo-Saxon : 
" Madam, darn your eyes!" Throwing the canvas aside, 
the portrait was finished. He had given it the last touch. 



Agassiz and the Snake. 
Of Pkof. Agassiz, Miss A. C. Brackett, recalling a day 
in the Farmingham school, says: When one of the pupils- 
one day produced a little field-snake from her desk, amid 
the confusion tRat ensued in the group around, Agassiz 
walked quickly up to us, instantly detached the little, 
brown, terrified thing, and took it at once gently into his 
hand, calling it by its own name, and thereby, as it were, 
giving it a welcoming right into the one great family to- 
live and enjoy itself. As Mr. Whipple says, the dumb 
creation recognize their friend, for even the little snake 
curled itself at once contentedly round his strong right hand. 



The Czar Nicholas and the Artisan. 
Of the Emperor Kicbolas, who died about a quarter 
of a century ago, a characteristic anecdote is told in the 
diaries of the Privy Councilor Boguslovskie, recently 
published in St. Petersburg. As he was walking one day, 
he heard a German artizan declare, that he would not quit 



OF NOTED PERSONS. 19 

the spot until he had seen tlie Emperor. The latter went 
toward him, and demanded who he was and what he wished. 
The German, who did not know the Czar, answered that 
he was an artisan from Hamburg, and desired to submit a 
paper describing a new and cheap method of making shoe- 
soles for the army. 

"Why do you apply direct to the Emperor?" inquired 
the Czar; "why have you not first addressed yourself to 
some one about him?" 

"I wished to do so, and called on the Chief of Police 
for that purpose," returned the man, "but his clerk asked 
me to pay 800 roubles, which is impossible, as I have no 
money." 

"Well, my fine fellow," said the Czar, "if you will 
transact your business with the Emperor in person, speak 
up, for I am he." 

At this unexpected revelation, the honest Hamburger 
was so terrified that, trembling from head to foot, he fell 
on his knees. In doing so, his hat dropped from his hand. 
The Emperor's dog, his almost constant companion, seizing 
the hat, began playing with it. The Emperor contem- 
plated the scene with characteristic pride, hugely relishing 
the fright of the poor artizan. At last he pulled the hat 
from between the dog's teeth, and handing it, smiling, to 
the still kneeling Hamburger, said : 

" Do not be alarmed, my friend ; give me your paper, I 
will have it examined. Meanwhile, come to the Palace, 
where you shall have a pecuniary indemnity for the fright 
you have suffered." 

The Hamburger himself went mad from fright, but his 
family received a regular pension. 



20 AKECD0TE8 

Anecdote of an English Admiral. 
When Sir James Anderson, of tlie Great Eastera, first 
went to sea, his motlier made him promise to say his 
prayers on shipboard, no matter what opposition or ridicule 
he might meet with. One sailor boxed the boys ears and 
affected to regard him as a hypocrite, whereupon another 
one of the saddest scapegraces on board, championed the 
boy, invited the bnlly on deck and gave him a tremendous 
thrashing, adding a grim warning that he would serve any 
one else in the same way who presumed to prevent the boy 
from saying his prayers. Next night the gentle-hearted 
boy, to avoid strife, undertook to say his prayers in his 
hammock, whereon his protector lugged him out by the 
back of the neck and gave him plainly to understand that 
he was not to shirk his duty ; that when his companion did 
the fighting, his protege would have to do the praying, and 
he kept him daily to the task. 



The Cabin Boy and the Admiral. 

During a terrible naval battle between the English and 
the Dutch, the English flagship, commanded by Admiral 
Narborough, was drawn into the thickest of the fight. 
Two masts were soon shot away, and the main-mast fell 
with a fearful crash upon the deck. Admiral j^arborough 
saw that all was lost unless he could bring up his ships 
from the right. Hastily scrawling an order, he called for 
volunteers to swim across the boihng water under the hail 
of shot and shell. A dozen sailors at once offered their 
services, and among them a cabin boy. 

' ' Why, ' ' said the Admiral, ' ' what can you do, my fear- 
less lad?" 

' ' I can swim, sir, ' ' the boy replied ; " If I be shot, I can 
be easier c^-iared than anyone else." 



OF NOTED PERSONS, 2i 

Narborougli hesitated. His men were few, and his posi- 
tion was desperate. The boy plunged into the sea amid 
the cheers of the sailors, and was soon lost to sight. The 
battle raged fiercer, and as the time went on, defeat seemed 
inevitable. i3ut just as hope was fading, a thundering can- 
nonade was heard from the right, and the reserve were 
seen bearing down upon the enemy. By sunset the 
Dutch fleet were scattered far and wide, and the cabin boy, 
the hero of the hour, was called in to receive the honor due 
him. His modesty and bearing so won the heart of the 
old Admiral, that he exclaimed : 

"I shall live to see you have a flagship of your own!" 
The prediction was fulfilled when the cabin boy, having 
become Admiral Cloudsley Shovel, was knighted by the 
King. 



Collosal Fortunes. 

A California paper says : During the magnificent reign 
of Louis XIY. there was more extreme poverty in France 
than there is now in all Europe — Ireland included. The 
condition of the emancipated Russian serf is far better than 
that of the French or German peasant two centuries ago ; 
and within the historical era there is no record of a time 
when fifty millions of the common people and poor were so 
comfortably situated as the fifty millions who now inhabit 
the United States. 

But if the condition of the poor has improved, the pri- 
vate fortunes of the rich have so increased as to utterly 
confound all attempts at comparison with the rich men of 
past ages. "As rich as Croesus " has stood for an adage 
these twenty-three centuries. Yet Croesus was a King who 
devoted his whole energies to the acquisition of gold ; and 
there is good reason to believe, that we have not less than 



22 AI^^ECDOTES 

half a dozen men and women in tins State, who are richer 
in gold and its equivalents, than this Lydian monarch. 
The richest man in Rome at the time of Csesar, was Cras- 
sus. His fortune has been carefully estimated by several 
historians, but never above $8,500,000 of our money. 
This is not much more than William H. Yanderbilt's 
yearly income, and it is more than $1,000,000 below the 
appraisementof the fortune of the lateWilliamS. O'Brien, of 
San Francisco. The Astor estate was valued ten years ago at 
$40,000,000. At a moderate rate of accretion — say 5 per 
cent — it must now amount to $60,000,000. The yearly 
income at the same rate is $3,000,000. This is a third 
more than the entire income of the monarch of the British 
Empire, and a good deal more than the entire revenues of 
the English Government 250 years ago. It is asserted, 
that there are eight or ten English Peers whose incomes 
each exceed the allowances of Parliament to the Queen, 
and yet the richest men in England are commoners. Half 
a century ago, the reputed wealthiest man in America was 
old Stephen Girard, of Philadelphia. His estate was ap- 
j)raised below $15,000,000. There are probably now a 
hundred private fortunes in the United States, each greater 
than Girard' s, and half a dozen more than twice as great. 
In the purchasing power of money the ancients had the ad- 
vantage. A dollar would buy more a thousand years ago 
than five will now. Forty years back, a man who had 
$100,000 was rated as quite rich, and one of $500,000 phe- 
nomenal. The latter class were not as numerous in this 
country as those of $500,000 are now. 

Of course, there is not gold and silver enough in the 
world to represent the aggregate of these little private for. 
tunes, nor a tithe of them. They are invested in lands, 
houses, government, railway, bank, mining, and other 
stocks. The national bonds of England, France and the 



OF NOTED PEKSONS. 2& 

United States, cover nearly ten thousand millions, and the 
railway securities of the United States alone cover nearly 
five thousand millions. The largest private landed estates 
are held in Spanish America, Mexico, Kussia, England and 
the United States, but the largest of all in the latter 
country, and by corporations. It is thought — and justly — 
a great hardship to the common people of England and Scot- 
land, that the Duke of Sutherland should own over 1,200,' 
•000 acres, and many other prominent nobles more than 
100,000 each. But there is one corporation in this country 
that has been granted 49,000,000 acres, and then 48,000,- 
■000; and two others, represented by less than ten men, 
25,000,000 acres. At the time that Henry YIII. confis- 
cated the estates of the Roman Catholic Church in his 
dominions, they did not amount to a tenth as many acres 
as the grant of Congress to the I*^orthern Pacific Eailroad ; 
but they were enough to lay the foundations of the richest 
nobility in the world, and their revenues to-day can hardly 
be less than $120,000,000. Reasoning from history and 
analogy, the most stupendous private fortunes in the 
United States during the next fifty years will be realized 
from the enormous land grants, now hardly worth $2. 50 an 
acre, but hereafter as surely to be worth from $50 to $100 
as a dollar is worth 100 cents. A corporation whose land 
grant covers, say 20,000,000 acres, and whose stock is to 
the extent of 90 per cent in the hands of, say ten persons, 
if it can hold on to its lands for twenty or thirty years free 
from taxes, will have a property in land worth anywhere 
from $400,000,000 to $2,000,000,000, or $36,000,000 to 
$360, 000, 000 for each of its principal stockholders. These 
figures, though they at first thought seem to run into the 
region of fable, are not much more astounding than the 
exploits of the Yanderbilts, Astors, and Packards already 
realized. The great landed estates of England are pro- 



24: ANECDOTES 

tected by laws of entail and primogeniture, forbidden in 
the United States. 



Huxley to the Boys. 

In his address before the students of University College, 
London, among other good things Professor Huxley said : 

Upon whatever career you may enter, intellectual quick- 
ness, industry and the power of bearing fatigue, are three 
great advantages. But I want to impress upon you, and 
through you upon those who will direct your future course, 
the conviction which I entertain, that, as a general rule, the 
relative importance of these three qualifications is not 
rightly estimated, and that there are other qualities of no 
less value which are not directly tested by school competi- 
tion. A somewhat varied experience of men, has led me, 
the longer I live, to set the less value upon mere clever- 
ness ; to attach more and more importance to industry and 
to physical endurance. Indeed, I am much disposed to 
think, that endurance is the most valuable quality of all; 
for industry, as the desire to work hard, does not come to 
much if a feeble frame is unable to respond to the desire. 
Everj^body who has had to make his way in the world, 
must know that, while the occasion for intellectual effort of 
a high order is rare, it constantly happens that a man's 
future turns upon his being able to stand a sudden and 
heavy strain upon his powers of endurance. 

To a lawyer, physician or a merchant, it may be every- 
thing to be able to work sixteen hours a day for as long as 
is needful, without knocking up. ' Moreover, the patience, 
tenacity and good humor which are among the most im- 
portant qualifications for dealing wath men, are incompati- 
ble with an irritable brain, a weak stomach or a defective 
circulation. If any one of you prize-winners were a son of 



OF NOTED PERSONS. 25 

mine (as miglit have been the case, I am glad to think, on 
former occasions), and a good fairy were to offer to equip 
him according to my wislies for the battle of practical life, 
I should say: " I do not care to trouble you for any more 
cleverness ; put in as much industry as you can instead ; 
and oh ! if you please, a broad, deep chest and a stomach 
of whose existence he shall never know anything." I 
should be well content with the prospects of a fellow so 
endowed 



The Last Words of Distinguished Persons. 

Queen Elizajbeth, at the end of a most prosperous 
reign, begun amid dangers and many difficulties, that were 
overcome by bold measures and prudent councils, died 
exclaiming : ' 'All my possessions for a moment of time ! ' ' 
George lY. met death with almost a jest upon his lips. 
Turning to Sir "Waltren "Waller, on whose arm he leaned, 
he said: "Whatty, what is this? It is death, by boy, 
and they have deceived us. " The Danish sovereign, Fred- 
erick Y., greatly beloved by his subjects, cried: "There 
is not a drop of blood on my hands," as he passed away. 
Henry YIII., who had altered the whole course of monas- 
tic life, in England, exclaims; ' ' Monks ! Monks ! Monks ! ' ' 
Edward YI., the wan boy-king, with his fast-fading eyes, 
commended his soul to God: "Lord, take my spirit;" 
and Cromwell, as he listened to the discourse of those 
about him, said : ' ' Then I am safe, ' ' and was silent 
forever. 

The last word of Charles I. on the scaffold, to Arch- 
bishop Juxon, was, "Kemember," referring to his desire 
that his son Charles should forgive his father's murderers. 
Ann Boleyn, in the same terrible situation, clasped her fair 
neck, saying, " It is small, very small ; " and Sir Thomas 



26 AifECDOTES 

More, as lie yielded himself to the executioner, said, with 
sorry wit, "For my coming down, let me shift for myself." 
Joan of Arc, at the stake, ended her eventful, stormy life 
with our Savior's name upon her lips, as brave as Gen- 
eral Wolfe, who, dying in the midst of victory on the 
battlefield, and hearing of the enemy's retreat, cried, 
' ' What, do they run already ? Then I die happy ; " or 
Sir Philip Sidney, after he had relinquished the draught 
of water to a humbler comrade, though parched with 
thirst, turned him round to die. saying, ' ' Let be behold 
the end of this world with all its vanities." 

Mirabeau desired to die while delicious strains of music 
floated on the air, but his last utterance was a demand for 
laudanum to drown pain and consciousness. Mozart's last 
words were : ' ' Let me hear once more those notes, so long 
my solace and delight;" but Haydn, forgetful of his art, 
cried: " God preserve my Emperor." Alfieri's sympa- 
thetic nature displayed itself in the words ' ' Clasp my hand, 
dear friend, I die;" Goethe cries "Light, more light;" 
Tasso, '•'•In tuosmanus, Domine-,^'' Byron, "Come, come, 
no weakness: let's be a man to the last; I must sleep 
now." And those who saw his embalmed body in 1824, 
when brought to England from Missolonghi in the Florida 
and removed to Sir Edward Knatchbull's house in Great 
George street, where the coffin was opened, describe the 
face as of marble whiteness, the expression that of stern 
quietude, lying wrapped in his blue cloth cloak, the throat 
and head uncovered, crisp, curling locks slightly streaked 
with gray, clustering over the temples ; the profile of ex- 
ceeding beauty. Boileau congratulated himself, as he 
closed his eyes upon this world, upon the purity of his 
works, saying : " It is a great consolation to a poet about 
to die, that he has never written anything injurious to 



OF NOTED PERSONS. 27 

virtue;" and Sir Walter Scott, little thinking liis end so 
near, said : "I feel as if I were myself again. ' ' 

Dr. Johnson, the rough, kind heart, who loved a good 
hater, died as he said to Miss Morris, " God bless you, my 
dear." Washington, dying at Mount Yernon, cried, "It 
is well." Franklin's last words were: "A dying man 
can do nothing easily." Mme. de Stael, whose sorest trial 
was her enforced absence from her native land, died saying: 
"I have loved my God, my fiither, and my liberty." 

Hannah. More's last words were " Patty — joy ;" Grotius, 
*'Be serious;" Haller, "The artery ceases to beat;" 
Adams, "Independence forever;" Jefferson, "I resign 
my soul to God, my daughter to my country ;" Locke, to 
LadyMasham, who was reading the Psalms, "Cease now;" 
and poor Lamb, after the most self-sacrificing existence, 
wrote his last words to a friend, ' ' My bedfellows are cramp 
and cough ; we three sleep in a bed." 

Bishop Broughton's last words are "Let fhe earth be 
filled with His glory;" Archbishop Sharp, "I shall be 
liappy;" Bishop Ken, "God's will be done;" Parrar, 
Cranmer, Hooper, and George Herbert, "Lord, receive 
my spirit," and these are but a few of many such utter- 
ances. The Prince Consort confirmed the impression that 
prevails, that the dying have sometimes a foretaste of 
coming happiness. ' ' I have such sweet thoughts' ' were 
the last words of a most noble life. 



Napoleon I. and Talma. 
Under the Consulate, Talma used to go once a week to 
the Tuileries, to be present at the breakfast of Bonaparte. 
He thought it proper to discontinue his visits when the 
First Consul became Emperor. The latter did not fail to 
perceive his absence, and spoke of it to Regnault de Saint- 



28 ANECDOTES 

Jean-d'Angely. "I no longer see Talma," lie said to 
liim. "Is he, too, sulking? Does he mean to play 
Brutus? It is one of his best parts on the stage, it is 
true." These words were repeated to Talma, who knew 
that the desire of l^apoleon was equivalent to an order. 
Accordingly, one morning he went to the Tuileries, irre- 
proachably clad in the new court costume : brown cloth 
coat lined with white satin, black silk breeches, shoes with 
small gold buckle, a hat and feather, and a sword with a 
finely-chiseled steel hilt. Just as they were sitting down 
to the table, !Napoleon openly showed his satisfaction at 
seeing Talma; and, when breakfast was over, he made a 
sign to him to follow him into his cabinet. "I recognize 
your habitual tact," said Napoleon, "and I am obliged to 
you. You have understood that it was your duty to pre- 
sent yourself before the Emperor. Be assured that you 
will always find in me the man of the past. I shall have 
even greater pleasure in returning to those chats in which 
you spoke to me of my destinies. You were the first. 
Talma, I remember, to discover my star. I did not know 
you were such a good astronomer." 

Another time Napoleon said laughingly to Talma, who 
henceforth did not discontinue his visits : "Do you know 
what I have just been told ? People say that you are giv- 
ing me lessons in deportment ; yes, that you are teaching 
me my trade of Emperor." "I, sire?" said Talma, 
disconcerted. "I confess that I could not have a better 
professor." "Sire, you are joking." "ISTo," replied. 
Napoleon; "but let us talk of something else. Yester- 
day you played ' La Mort de Pompee. ' I was in my 
box." "And I redoubled my efibrts to satisfy your 
Majesty." "Well, you only half-succeeded, my dear 
Talma!" "What, sire?" "Yes, since you pass for 
giving me lessons in Royalty, I want in return to give you 



OF WOTED PERSONS, 29 

a lesson in tragedy. You fatigue your arms too much. 
The leaders of Empires are less prodigal of their move- 
ments ; they know that a gesture, a glance, is an order ; 
thenceforward, they spare both gestures and glances. 
There is also a verse, the sense of which has escaped 
you." Talma became all attention. " It is this one : 

'Pour moi qui tiens le trone egal a rinfamle.' 

Ccesar there does not say all that he thinks. The great 
battles that he fought did not give him the sovereign 
power to make him despise it. But he needs to flatter the 
old idea of Republican Rome, and not to wound the feel- 
ings of the soldiers who are listening to him. Do not 
make Cmsar talk like Brutus. When Brutus says that he 
has a horror of Kings, he is sincere ; but the other is not. 
Mark this difference." Talma's reply is not recorded. 
But it is intelligible, that Yoltaire's verse was a hard 
morsel for the Emperor. 



A Chat with Gustav Dore. 
A Paris correspondent of the Philadelphia Telegraph 
gives the following interesting interview with the cele- 
brated Gustav Dore : He was eleven years old, he told 
me, when he made his first drawing for publication, but 
his first actual work, a set of caricatures of the "Labors of 
Hercules," was produced when he was thirteen. At the 
age of fifteen he was a regular contributor to a host of 
cheap illustrated publications "in France, Germany, Rus- 
sia, Poland, and I know not where else beside," he added, 
laughingly. Two years later he issued his "Wandering 
Jew," probably the most remarkable series of illustrations 
ever conceived and executed by a boy of seventeen. In 
those early days he used to make sometimes as many as 
(Shree or four drawings a day, for each of which he charged 



30 ANECDOTES 

5 francs. It was the period of cheap novels, issued in 
numbers, in newspaper form, at 10 and 12 cents the num- 
ber, and his facile pencil was called into play to illustrate 
the works of writers lon^ ago forgotten, such as Alphonse 
Brot, the bibliophile Jacob, etc. Sometimes he was not 
paid for his work — often it was not even signed. Then 
again he would execute a series of drawings for some pub- 
lication that would perish before reaching half a dozen 
numbers, and so his work would be lost. I told him of an 
American admirer who once tried to form a collection of 
these earlier efforts of his genius. He laughed at the idea, 
and said that to form anj^thing like a complete one would 
be impossible, as he did not possess one himself, nor would 
it be possible to find many of the light, ephemeral publica- 
tions In which they had appeared. " Moreover," he said, 
' ' there are too many of them. In the first eleven years 
of my artistic career, I must have produced, not hundreds, 
but thousands of illustrations." 

He then spoke of one of his earliest works, a "Comic 
History of Russia," namely, a series of caricatures published 
during the Crimean war, and afterward prohibited by the 
Government. This work has become extremely rare, so 
much so that Dore only possesses one copy of it himself, 
andthatisina very bad condition. "I wish," said I, "M. 
Dore, that you would make an exhibition of your collected 
works." "Madam," he replied, laughing, "they would 
reach from here to Yincennes if they were set side by side ; 
I would have to engage the Palais de 1' Industrie to hold 
my exhibition in. " He then told me that he had, in his 
possession, whole boxes full of unpublished illustrations 
and completed drawings that have never yet been shown 
to the public. 

Some joking remark was made respecting tke great 
artist's persistent celibacy. "Ah," he replied, "I have 



OF NOTED PERSONS. ' 31 

been too lazy to marry, and now I am too old — I am forty. 
Besides, I have been so happy in my family relations that 
I have had no inclination for matrimony." He alluded, I 
believe, to his mother, who is still living and to whom he 
has always been tenderly devoted. From something that 
he let fall, I was led to imagine that he has a vague idea of 
visiting the United States at no very distant date, and that 
a series of illustrations of American Hfe would be the 
result of his journey did he ever undertake it. I^iagara 
and the wonderful scenery of the Yellowstone would afford 
congenial subjects for his pencil. 



Thurlow "Weed's Stories of Horace Greeley. 

Thuelow Weed narrates the following concerning him- 
self and Horace Greeley : — "We were the best of friends 
for fourteen or fifteen years. How well I remember when 
I first met him. I should think it was in 1839, perhaps. 
He had been printing the JVew Yorker for a year or two, 
and I had read it with great interest. It was bright, 
aggressive, and able, and a strong tariff paper. We in 
Albany wanted a campaign paper, and I came down to see 
if I couldn't get this Wew Yorker man to run it. I found 
the office, and went in and inquired for the editor, of a tall, 
verdant-looking fellow who was setting type at a case. ' I 
am the editor,' he said. I was a little surprised, but I in- 
troduced myself, and told him I wanted to speak with him 
about State politics. He wore no coat, and his shirt-sleeves 
were rolled up ; and I well remember how he leaned one 
elbow on the case, half-turned around and said, ' All right 
— go ahead. ' I told him I would like to see him alone ; 
when he laid down his composing-stick, and we went 
around and sat on some boxes while I revealed my plan. 
The upshot of it was, that we hired him to go to Albany 



32 A^^ECDOTES 

two days in every week, to edit the new Jeffersonian as a 
campaign paper, while he continued to run his I^ew Yorher. 

He was one of the most faithful, honest, industrious 
men I ever met in my life. We became very much at- 
tached to each other. He always stayed atmy house whenhe 
came to Albany, every week through all that year or more. 
I respected and esteemed him so highly that my regard 
grew into a real affection for him. We continued warm 
and confidential friends for many years." 

"He possessed political ambition, and it ruined him. 
ISTone of his friends suspected him of it at that time. He 
concealed it wonderfully, or else it had not then developed. 
I was drawn so strongly to him because I thought he was 
like myself, only a great deal better. I never had any am- 
bition to hold ofiice. I had an ambition to be influential, 
and to help the State to improve the quality of its public 
servants, but not to hold office myself. 

" Greeley was a powerful man — one of the most talented 
men this country ever produced ; he was, also, one of the 
purest. His extraordinary ability, purity, and industry 
made him invincible against every foe but ambition. We 
had often talked of office-holding, and warned each other 
against it. But, just before the State Convention of 1853, 
he came to Albany and said to me : ' Weed, I'd like to 
be Governor, ' I told him I was sorry, for I doubted if he 
could be nominated. He said, ' Tou don't think the Whig 
party can afford to ignore the temperance question this 
year, do yoli?' I said no, — I thought we should have to 
nominate some temperance man. 

" ' Then why not me V he asked. ' Because you will be 
thought too ultra,' I answered. 'Tou have beaten the 
bush, and Myron Clark will catch the hare.' He looked 
disappointed, but he thought he could be nominated. 

"In a few days, when it was pretty certain that Clark 



OF NOTED PERSONS. 33 

would get the place, he came again and said : ' Weed, 
I'd like to be Lieutenant-Grovernor. ' I told him that I 
didn't believe he could get that, either. It would be 
overloading the ticket, — too much temperance. Besides, 
I told him that Kajmond would get the place. That was 
the last feather that broke the camel's back. It was a ter- 
rible blow to him. To be beaten by Kaymond, whom he 
had nourished and warmed into life, ai>d taught the busi- 
ness of newspaper-making, — he couldn't stand that. He 
was greatly grieved. And he laid it to me, — wrong- 
fully. He hardly ever spoke to me after that. We 
were strangers for years. Then, when I was sick in 
'59, Greeley came to see me, and we resumed somewhat 
our former relations. In his last sickness I called to see 
him, but I was some time in finding him, and, when I at 
last ascertained where he was, they refused me admission. 
I was sorry. I wanted to see him once more very much. 
He was one of the purest, most generous, and kindest 
men I had ever met. ' ' 



An Anecdote of Gladstone. 
The man is more interesting, says a writer, than any of 
the parts he has been called to play, but we come to under- 
stand the man better by seeing how he shapes and molds 
these parts. As an orator, his conspicuous merits, besides 
his striking countenance, dignified action, and a voice full, 
rich, and admirably modulated, are fertility and readiness. 
He seems to have always at command an inexhaustible 
store of ideas, reasons, illustrations, whatever be the 
subject which he is required to deal with. Of all great 
English speakers, probably no one, not even William Pitt, 
has been so independent of preparation. Even Fox, swift 
and rushing as he was, was great only in reply, when his 



34 ANECDOTES 

feelings were heated by the atmosphere of battle, whereas 
Mr. Gladstone is just as animated and forcible in an open- 
ing, or in a purely ornamental and uncontentious harangue, 
as in the midst of parliamentary strife. 

Of the many anecdotes that are current, illustrating his 
amazing power of rising to an occasion, one may be given 
which has the merit of being true: On the afternoon 
when he was to make an important motion in the House of 
Commons, a friend, happening to call on him between 
two and three o'clock, found him just sitting down to make 
some notes of the coming speech. He laid aside his pen 
and talked for a while, then jotted down a few heads on 
paper, went down to the House before four o'clock, found 
himself drawn into a preliminary controversy of a verj 
trying nature, in which he had to repel so many questions 
and attacks that it was past six before he rose to make the 
great speech. He then discovered that, as he had left his 
eye-glasses at home, his notes were practically useless, put 
them quietly back into his coat pocket, and delivered with 
no aid to his memory, and upon that one hour's prepara- 
ation, a powerful argument interspersed with passages of 
wonderful passion and pathos, which lasted for three hours, 
and will always rank among his finest efforts. 



Stories of the German Emperor. 

We well remember, says a writer in Chambers' Journal^ 
the first time we saw the German Emperor. Returning 
one day from a walk, we observed a crowd of people in the 
promenade, standing at a short distance trom, and watching 
an elderly gentleman talking to a pretty girl. The girl 
kept courtesying backwards, retreating a step each time. 
The Emperor William — for he it was — followed her up, 
making believe to bore a hole at her with his walking-stick. 



OF NOTED PERSONS. 35 

Another day, a large party of school-boys, headed by 
their master, arrived at Ems to spend a holiday. After 
exploring the town and drinking the waters, they came 
trooping along the covered colonnade, which forms one 
side of the Restaurant Gardens, and which is itself lined 
with stalls belonging to the larger shops in the town. 
The Emperor, walking quietly along in the opposite direc- 
tion, accosted the foremost boys, saying : 

" Wliat brought you here, my lads ? " 

" We came to spend a holiday and to see the Emperor," 
promptly replied their spokesman. 

' ' To see the Emperor ! Then have a good look at him, ' ' 
rejoined the monarch, turning himself round back and 
front. "I am the Emperor!" And forthwith he took 
the delighted boys to a book-stall close by, and presented 
each of them with a photograph of himself. 

One morning, there was considerable excitement at the 
Tier Zeitung^ waiters rushing in all directions, and Herr 
Huyn, our little host, looking fussy and all-important. 
We inquired the cause, and were told that the Emperor 
was expected in the afternoon to call upon some ladies of 
high rank, who were staying at the hotel. A huge roll of 
new carpet, which had just been brought in, was to be laid 
down on the grand staircase, and flowers were to be scat- 
tered in profusion everj^where. All the forenoon, poor 
little Herr was in a pitiable state. He did not like to lay 
down his beautiful carpet, and have its freshness sullied by 
the numerous feet passing continually up and down the 
grand staircase ; and yet he was in considerable fright 
lest he might not have all ready in time when the Emperor 
should be seen approaching. Waiters, acting as scouts, 
were continually running in and out, and peering up and 
down the street. It was a never-ending refrain of "Sister 
Anne, sister Anne, do you see anyone coming?" 



36 ANECDOTES 

At last, a horror-stricken waiter came rushing from the 
corridor above us, exclaiming : 

"The Emperor is here! He is at this moment in the 
salon of Madame la Princesse ! " 

Herr Huyn stood aghast. "How did he get there? 
When did he come ? ' ' 

Alas ! it was discovered that the Emperor, coming 
quietly and unattended, had turned in at the entry to the 
baths, gone up an uncarpeted back staircase leading from 
the court, inquired his way from the astonished servant to 
the Princess' rooms, and so stolen a march on our poor 
crestfallen little host. 

There was nothing now to be done but carry carpet and 
flowers to the back staircase, and spread the one and scat- 
ter the other as rapidly as possible. This done, Herr 
Huyn kept guard at the foot of the stairs, still uneasy lest, 
through a combination of untoward circumstances, the 
Emperor might now make his exit by the front entrance, 
and so, after all, never know of the preparations made to 
do him honor. However, at last he was heard approach- 
ing, accompanied by the Princess. At once noticing the 
change, ho inquired : 

"For whom has all this trouble been gone to ? " 

<■ ' For you, sir ! ' ' returned little Herr Huyn, reverently. 

"Alas!" said the Emperor, " it is a pity to leave such 
lovely flowers to be trodden on by an old man like me." 
And stooping, he selected some of the most beautiful, and 
presented them to the • Princess, and then fastened a blos- 
som in his own coat. Such was the graceful acknowledge- 
ment he made to Herr Huyn, and by such simple acts did 
he daily endear himself to his people. 



OF NOTED PERSONS. o7 

Col. IngersoU on Intemperance. 

Intemperance cuts down youth in its vigor, manhood 
in its strength, and age in its weakness. It breaks the 
father's heart, bereaves the doting mother, extinguishes 
natural affections, erases conjugal love, blots filial attach- 
ments, blights parental hope, and brings down mourning 
age in sorrow to the grave. It makes wives widows, chil- 
dren orphans, fathers fiends, and all of them paupers and 
beggars. It feeds rheumatism, arouses gout, welcomes 
epidemics, invites cholera, imports pestilence, and em- 
brace? consumption. It covers the land with idleness and 
crime. It fills your jails, supplies your almshouses, and 
demands your asylums. It engenders controversies, fos- 
ters quarrels, and cherishes riot. It crowds your peniten- 
tiaries, and furnishes victims for the scaffolds. It is the 
boon of the gambler, the element of the burglar, the prop 
of the highwayman, and the su]3port of a midnight incen- 
diary. It countenances the liar, respects the thief, esteems 
the blasphemer. It violates obligations, reverences fraud, 
and honors infamy. It hates love, scorns virtue, and 
slanders innocence — incites the father to butcher his help- 
less ofF-spring, and the child to grind the parental age. It 
burns up men, consumes women, detests life, curses God 
and hates heaven. It suborns witnesses, nurses perfidy, 
defiles the jury box and judicial ermine. It bribes votes, 
disqualifies voters, corrupts elections, pollutes our institu- 
tions, and endangers government. It degrades the citi- 
zens, debases the legislature, dishonors the statesman, and 
disarms the patriot. It brings shame, not honor; terror, 
not safety ; despair, not hope ; misery, not happiness ; and 
with the malevolence of a fiend, it calmly surveys its 
frightful desolation, and unsatisfied with havoc, it kills 
peace, poisons felicity, ruins morals, blights confidence, 
slays reputation, and wipes out national honor, then curses 



38 AJ^-ECDOTES 

the world and laughs at its ruin. It does that and more 
— it murders the soul. 



A Reminiscence of Gen. Scott. 

One evening during the early days of our "late un- 
pleasantness" there was to be an exhibition of Grammar 
School No. 44, in 'New York City. I arrived late at the 
school building and found several distinguished-looking 
visitors on the platform of the hall. Among them there 
was one whom I at once recognized by the portraits I had 
seen of him — it was Major-General Scott, the hero of the 
Mexican war. He was in full regimentals, and sat in an 
arm-chair a little to the right of the center of the stage — 
a very grand, lai-ge man, with snowy hair and whiskers. 
He gave the most flattering, the most rapt attention to the 
reading of every composition, to all the singing, declama- 
tion — every exhibition of skill, however perfectly or imper- 
fectly done. The presence of so distinguished a visitor 
stimulated some to do their best, while it scared others 
into doing their very worst. It was on the whole, how- 
ever, a brilliant success. 

After the exercises, the President of our local board ol 
school oiRcers approached the General's chair and said 
something to him. We know he was asked to make a 
' ' few remarks, ' ' and wondered if he would consent. To 
our great delight there were evident signs of compliance ; 
the old hero commenced to rise. One of the school officers, 
approaching his chair on the opposite side, offered to assist 
him. He declined assistance, but when the gentleman 
persisted and made an attempt to take hold of his arm. 
General Scott impatiently and imperatively put him aside. 
Those near the platform heard him say, "I need no assist- 
ance — no assistance — only give me a little time." The 



OF KOTED PERSONS. 6d 

process of getting straightened up on the part of the Gen- 
eral was very slow, but not a jerky or a trembling one, 
and suggested rather a rheumatic infirmity than the stiff- 
ness of age, though he must have been over seventy. 
How immensely tall he seemed as lie stretched his majestic 
figure higher and higher until he towered half a foot or 
more above the men around him. Then he was introduced 
to the children, and the tumultuous applause of hundreds 
of small hands greeted him from every part of the immense 
hall. The applause continued until the principal touched 
the bell. The General waited until the silence was perfect, 
and then he said in a clear, ringing voice : ' ' Youths and 
maidens," and for over a half hour he held forth in a 
majestic simplicity of style never to be forgotten by any 
boy or girl who heard him, though there was nothing very 
remarkable or very original about anything he said. He 
praised and encouraged the pupils and aroused them to 
new effort. He compared their educational advantages to 
those of other lands and with those of this country fifty 
years ago. It was, in short, the prince of what children 
call ' ' goody speeches. ' ' 



Governor Andrew's Prayer. 

The memoir of Governor Andrew which has recently 
been prepared by his friend, Peleg W. Chandler, for the 
Massachusetts Historical Society, contains the following 
account of a memorable scene in the official life of the 
great War Governor, which has a flavor of Cromwell and 
the English Commonwealth : 

"Among the Governor's friends was a young merchant 
of Boston, and I will let him tell the story in his own way : 
' It was in the summer of 1862, when emancipation was 
being talked a great deal. We had not had any great 



40 .O-ECDOTES 

successes, and everybody had a notion that emancipation 
ought to come. One day the Governor sent for me to come 
up to the State House. I went up to his room, and I shall 
never forget how I met him. He was signing some kind 
of bonds, standing at a tall desk m the Council Chamber, 
in his shirt-sleeves, his fingers all covered with ink. He 
said "How do you do ? I want you to go to Washington. " 
"Why, Governor," said I, "I can't go to Washington 
on any such notice as this. I am busy, and it is impossible 
for me to go." "All my folks are serving their country," 
said he, and he mentioned the various services the mem- 
bers of his staff were engaged in, and said with emphasis, 
' ' Somebody must go to Washington. " " Well, Governor, 
I don't see how I can." Said he, "I command you to go." 
"Well," said I, " Governor, put it in that way, and I shall 
go, of course." "There is something going on," he 
remarked. "This is a momentous time." He turned 
suddenly towards me and said, "You believe in prayer, 
don't you?" I said, "Why, of course." "Then let us 
pray," and he knelt right down at the chair that was 
placed there ; we both knelt down, and I never heard such 
a prayer in all my life. I never was so near the throne of 
God, except when my mother died, as I was then. I said 
to the Governor, "I am profoundly impressed and I will 
start this afternoon for Washington." 

I soon found out that emancipation was in everybody's 
mouth, and when I got to Washington and called upon 
Sumner, he began to talk emancipation. He asked mc to 
go and see the President, and tell him how the people of 
Boston and J^ew England regarded it. I went to the 
White House that evening and met the President. He 
first talked about everything but emancipation, and finally 
he asked me what I thought about emancipation. I told 
him what I thought about it, and said that Governor Andrew 



OF NOTED PERSONS. 41 

was SO far interested in it that I had no doubt he had sent me 
on there to post the President in regard to what the class 
of people I met in Boston and New York thought of it, 
and then I repeated to him, as I had previously to Sumner, 
this prayer of the Governor, as well as I could remember 
it. The President said: "When we have the Governor 
of Massachusetts to send us troops in the way he has, and 
when we have him to utter such prayers for us, I have no 
doubt that we shall succeed." In September the Governor 
sent for me. He had a dispatch that emancipation would 
be proclaimed, and it was done the next day. You re- 
member the President made proclamation in September, 
to take effect in January. Well, he and I were together 
alone again in the Council Chamber. Said he, "You re- 
member when I wanted you to go on to Washington ?" I 
said, "Yes, I remember it very well." "Well," said 
he, "I didn't know exactly what I wanted you to go for 
then. 'Now I will tell you what let's do ; you sing 
'Coronation,' and I will join with you." So we sang 
together the old tune, and also "Praise God from whom 
all blessings flow." Then I sang "Old John Brown," he 
marching around and joining in the chorus after each 



Anecdote of General Lee. 

The following is from the Louisville Courier- Journal : 
It was in the summer of 1864, while the armies of the 
United States and Confederate States were confronting 
each other on the James, below Richmond. On a certain 
day a Federal attack, which was thought to be a decoy, 
was made on the south side of the river. We thought we 
saw evidences of a real attack on our side. Occasionally 
the whole picket-line would open fire. The gunboats at 



42 ANECDOTES 

Deep Bottom would send three hundred pounds crashing 
through the timbers in the rear of what had been Libby's 
residence, but was then General Lee's head-quartters. At 
about two o'clock p. m. , the artillery opened on our left. A 
few minutes afterward, we heard the unmistakable roar of 
infantry firing. We then knew that the lines of battle 
were engaged on our left. The pickets opened and kept 
up a rapid firing in our front, the gunboats sending their 
infernal machines more frequently. We, the Rockbridge 
Battery, were ordered to double-quick into position on 
Libby's Hill. On our way up, everything looked as 
though we were on the eve of terrible conflict, — the roar of 
artillery and infantry, the rapid movement of troops into 
line, and the solemnity that seemed to have impregnated 
the whole atmosphere. As we passed the Libby house, we 
saw General Lee in the yard. He was standing just under 
a low tree, with one arm extended, as if reaching for some- 
thing on the limb. As we got nearer to him, we could see 
what he was engaged in doing at such a time. A little 
bird, whose mother was just teaching it to use its wings, 
had, in its first effort, fallen to the ground. Its dumb 
mother, regardless of the death and carnage that intelli- 
gent man was dealing to his fellow, was uttering pitiful 
cries for her fallen offspring. General Lee reached down 
and picked up this little creature, and, when we passed, 
was in the act of placing it where its mother could care 
for it. 



Bismarck at Home — How He Wanted to Be a Parson. 

Five o'clock is Bismarck's dinner hour, and this is not 
departed from even in Berlin when he gives the diplo- 
matic dinner on the Emperor's birthday. Four plain 
courses are served. Bismarck was once a lover of light 



OF NOTED PERSONS. 43 

clarets ; lately he lias taken nothing but old, heavy wines 
and whisky. Beer and champagne he eschews altogether, 
but his guests can select from a large and varied wine 
cellar. The Princess does the honors of the table. The 
Prince leads the conversation, and is particularly ani- 
mated when strangers are present. Should he, on graver 
thoughts intent, wander from the subject, the Princess 
recalls him by a word or look, although she, for her 
part, is so busied with the cares of the household, that she 
has been known to drop her knife and run into the kitchen 
to scold the servants. When she returns, the thread of 
the story is taken up where she left it. The Prince is never 
weary of descanting on the exploits of his youth, of which 
the neighborhood of Yarzin was the scene. Touching 
upon this subject one evening when he had taken his long, 
patriarchal porcelain pipe to smoke upon the veranda, he 
said: "I sometimes wish my father had carried out his 
idea of making a parson of me. It was very nearly done, 
too. One of his relatives had already a place in sight where 
I should, at the end of the first year, have had an income 
of at least £150 a year." Something unexpected, how- 
ever, occurred, and the plan was frustrated ; "but," said 
the Chancellor, ' ' I would have been a much better man 
had I turned prrson." To this the Princess refused to 
agree, and the Prince went off into a laudation of England, 
which he said was like a garden, where he could have lived 
quietly and happily. 



How Cromwell Managed the Musket. 

The following- ordinance was issued by Oliver Crom- 
well, in 1641, regulating the exercises of the musketry. 
The manual of arms will be of interest to military men of 
the present day : 



44 ANECDOTES 

The Lord General Cromwell. — His ordinance for the 
righthe observation of je platoon exercise amonst ye mos- 
queteers of ye armie, to be heedfully acquitted by ye 
soulders : 

1. Balance youre mousquet. 

2. Find out youre charge. 

3. Open youre charge. 

4. Charge with bullet. 

5. Put youre scouring sticke in youre mousquet. 

6. Ram home youre charge. 

7. Draw fourth youre scouring sticke. 

8. Turn and shorten him to a handful. 

9. Return youre scouring sticke. 

10. Bring forward youre mousquet and poise. 

11. Balance your mousquet in left hand with barrell 
upwards. 

12. Draw forth youre match. 

13. Blow the ashes from youre coaj. 

14. Present youre left hand. 

15. Give fire, breast high. 



Lotta's First Experience — Interesting Incidents. 

"Whe*^ I first went on the stage," Lotta has been tell" 
ing an interviewer, "in the summer of 1858, — twenty 
years ago, by the way, — I determined to originate an en- 
tirely new school of acting. You may laugh, but my first 
idea was tragedy, and I actually had the part of Zady 
Macbeth committed to memory. The successful lady stars 
at that time were Lucille Western and Kate Bateman, and 
I felt that if there was any money to be made, it must be in 
the same line they were in. On Christmas Day, 1863, I 
was stopping with a friend in St. Louis, when Lucille 
Western visited that city and played ' East Lynne ' at on-^ 



OF NOTED PERSONS. 40 

of the theaters. I went to see her for the first time. At 
the conclusion of the performance, I concluded that tragedy 
or emotional acting was not my forte, for I was ashamed 
of puny efiforts, as witnessed before the mirror in my 
dressing-case, after having seen, what Lucille "Western 
could do in the same line. I was thoroughly disheartened, 
and sat down and had a real good cry. The friend at 
whose house I was stopping," continued Lotta, "was a 
prominent newspaper man, and had a penchant for enter- 
taining members of the theatrical profession. Go there 
when you would, you were always certain to find some 
actor at his table. "Well, on this Christmas Day I was 
oclling you of, when I came down to tea, my eyes still red 
with weeping, I found an elderly, good-natured, good-look- 
ing gentleman there. I was not a little flurried on his 
being introduced to me as John Brougham, the celebrated 
actor and play-writer, for I was not then so well used to 
meeting celebrities as I am now. I am sure Mr Brougham 
must have thought me a little goose, for I had not spoken 
to him two minutes before the recollection of my disap- 
pointment again welled up in my mind, and the tears came 
to my eyes. I can never forget how he questioned me as 
to what was the matter, and how kindly and fatherly he 
wormed out of me my secret. 

" 'The truth is, dear sis,' said he, after learning the full 
extent of my afiliction, ' you have chosen the wrong branch 
of the profession. This rage for weeping and wailing will 
soon run out, and the people will demand a more cheerful 
performance. Take to the soubrets, my girl — there is 
more money in that. "What you want, is to hit on some- 
thing odd and peculiar. Give the people something new. 
The American people are great for novelty, and will put a 
fortune into the purse of the one who pleases them. ' 

"I did not soon forget what he had told me. I am a 



46 ANECDOTES 

great gin for action, and when I taKe anything into my 
head, instead of dreaming over it, I get energetically to 
work. But, for the life of me, I couldn't think what school 
of acting to choose, until one day in Chicago, at a hotel 
where I was stopping, I came across the counterpart of 
the mischievous creature known throughout the length 
and breadth of the land as Lotta. She was a little miss of 
ten summers, and as provoking a little imp as was ever 
born. She was up to all sorts of tricks and comicalities, 
and yet, in spite of her mischief, one could not help loving 
her. In a word, she was at once the terror and delight of 
the house. I saw in an instant where an original character 
could be found, and began to study the oddities of the 
little elf. Then I would go to my room and practice what 
she had done. 

"In the farce of ']^an, the Good-for-Nothing, ' there 
occurs a splendid opportunity for introducing the vagaries 
of a spoilt, wayward child. How well I succeeded in that 
farce, and in other kindred plays written especially with a 
view to introducing these oddities, my career for the last 
fifteen years will attest. I had no trouble. I swam at 
once into public favor, partly by good luck, partly by the 
oddity of the thing, but chiefly by the wisdom and enter- 
prise of good managers, to whom successful stars owe more 
than they have often the candor to acknowledge." 



Thurlow Weed and the Reporter— An Interesting 
Interview. 

The following interview took place recently at Thurlow 
"Weed's residence in New York City : 

" What part of your life do you look back to with most 
satisfaction?" I asked. 

"To my persistent refusal of ofiice," he answered 



OF NOTED PERSONS. 47 

quickly, "and to that" — and he pointed to an old brown 
document, framed, hanging on ,the wall, which, on exami- 
nation, proved to be a Government warrant for 160 acres 
of land for his services as a soldier in the war of 1812. 

Observing that he had not located his warrant, and that 
it was still a sight draft for 160 acres of wild land, I asked 
him why he didn't use it. 

" Oh! I don't want to bother with it," he said. " I'll 
put it in my will." 

"But you said you had held office?" I reminded him. 

" Oh, yes ; I let the boys send me to the Legislature 
when I was a journeyman printer, fifty-five years ago. 
But I never had a thirst for office. A great manj- offices 
have been within my reach. Perhaps I am the only man 
who ever declined three first-class foreign missions, off'ered 
by three Presidents — Taylor, Fillmore and Lincoln." 

"They say you have been Governor a good deal?" I 
suggested. 

The old gentleman laughed heartily. 

" Yes, that's what they say ; but I was never elected to 
that office anyhow, and never drew a cent of salary. 
Yes," he added, after a pause, "of several Governors I 
have been the confidential friend, and perhaps I may say 
adviser." 

' ' You may, indeed, ' ' I assented. ' ' No other American 
has ever held such influential relations with high officials." 

"And the oddest of it is, said he, eagerly, rising and 
walking the room, as if to walk off" superfluous energy, 
"that I have been a confidential friend of at least tw^o 
Democratic Governors when I was a leading Whi'* The 
first was Silas Wright. ' ' 

"And they took your advice? " I asked. 

"Yes, very often. When Marcy was Governor, he^took 
me intimately into his confidence and his counsels; and. 



48 a:necdotes 

when he was ^uchanan's Secretary of State, I occupied 
the same relation to him. ' ' 

"You are so old, and have been so active, that you 
seem to have been a part of- almost everything that has 
happened in this country," I said. 

"Up there, somewhere," he answered, pointing indefi- 
nitely toward the wall, "is a silhouette of the first railroad 
in this country, and the first train of cars, running between 
Albany and Schenectady." He paused and found it, — 
the black line of coaches drawn by a queer-looking iron- 
horse, with copies of which most people are familiar. 
"About there — that's me," said he, putting his finger on 
one of the stove-pipe hats in the rear coach. 

"May I ask, "What is the greatest misfortune that ever 
happened to you? " 

"The greatest distress I ever sufi'ered?" he inquired. 
" Oh ! you must know what that was. Cruel, cruel ! The 
vilest slander that ever was framed, — that I was a monster 
of brutality, and had mutilated a corpse, for the purpose 
of helping the fortunes of a party." 

"I don't exactly remember what you mean," I said. 

"Why, Morgan! Morgan!" he exclaimed, and his face 
assumed a pained expression. "I sufi'ered untold distress, 
and was more or less under ban, for twenty-five years. 
Old acquaintances avoided me ; even my family was made 
to feel the disgrace, as if I were a felon. It was cruel!" 

"How was it?" I said. "Or, perhaps you prefer not 
to talk about it? " 

"I have no objection. It's an old story now, and be- 
longs to the past. I was living at Kochester at the time 
Morgan, who had exposed Masonry, was missing. It was 
believed that he had been drowned by members ot the 
Order, in Lake Ontario. A body was found which answered 
the description of his. It was exhibited in public, and 



OF NOTED PERSONS. 49 

was recognized as being him by his family and friends. It 
was buried by them. Afterward, it was claimed by the 
friends of another man, disinterred, and another inquest 
held. There was great excitement over the murder of 
Morgan, and I was prominent as an anti-Mason. When 
this last inquest was pending, the lawyer engaged by the 
Masons said to me, one day: 'What are you going to do 
for a Morgan now ? ' ' This man is a good enough Mor- 
gan,' I retorted, ' till you produce the man that was killed." 
He went off and reported that I said the deceased was a 
good enough Morgan till after election.'' This lie was first 
published by Henry O'Reilly, editor of the Eochester 
Daily Advertiser; and it made such an excitement, that 
he stuck to it and elaborated it. Finally, the lie took this 
form, that I had pulled out the beard, cut the hair, and 
otherwise defaced or mutilated the features of the Ontario 
corpse, so as to make them resemble Morgan ! This was 
in the winter of 1826-27." 

"Did people believe such a thing?" 

"Yes, a good many did. It was a thing I could not dis- 
prove to their satisfaction. I was abhorred by tens of 
thousands. Old acquaintances cut me. I was pointed at 
on the street. Strangers would look askance at me. I saw 
them. Friends gave me the cold shoulder. I received 
threatening anonymous letters. I was made to feel every- 
where and every hour that I was a marked man. And my 
poor family, sir," said he, lifting his hand with a pathetic 
gesture, "were made to feel the cruel thrusts in ways I 
cannot mention. " 

"How long did this ostracism last?" 

" Fifteen or twenty years actively, and in some directions 
a much longer time." 

"It seems strange that injustice should thrive so." 
said I. 



50 ANECDOTES 

"Well, it did thrive. O'Keilly became rich, and that lie 
was the foundation of his fortune. I drifted to Albany, 
and at last lived the shocking calumny down. Finally,, 
O'Reilly, who might have been worth millions if he had 
stuck to the telegraphs, which he manipulated at first, 
speculated in other things and lost money. He kept losing. 
He lost everything he had at last." 

"Were you glad?" 

" I was grateful that the Lord didn't allow such villainy 
to thrive forever," the old gentleman confessed ; "and then 
I felt sorry for- him." 

"Where is he now, — dead ? " 

"Oh, no," said he; "O'Eeilly is alive enough. Four 
years ago he wrote me a letter, saying that he was penni- 
less, and asking me to send him one hundred dollars." 

"Well, what did you do T' 

"I sent it to him." 

"You did?" 

" Certainly I did. And a few weeks later he wrote me 
a very grateful letter, which wound up by saying that he 
was completely out of money and out of business, and he 
didn't know what in the world he should do to keep alive 
if I didn't get him a place in the New York Custom 
House." 

" Is it possible?" 

"Yes." 

"What did you do?" 

"I went and reflected on how much pain he had caused 
me through a quarter of a century ; on the grief and dis- 
tress my family had suffered on his account ; on the morti- 
fication and humiliation he had heaped upon my party and 
my friends ; and then — then I went down and got him a 
place in the Custom House." 

"You did?" 



OF NOTED PERSONS. 51 

"I did." 

" Where is he now?" 

" In the Custom House, unless he has left since I heard 
from there. I believe he is there yet." 

""Well, Mr. "Weed, that beats all the revenges I ever 
heard of. Mr. Weed, you have put thousands of men in 
office ; have you met with grateful returns of your friendly 
services? " 

' ' Oh, yes, generally. Generous gratitude has been the 
rule!" 

" I have heard," I said, " that to do a service for a man 
is the way to make him an enemy. ' ' 

"That is not my observation," he answered. 

"Then you believe in human nature and friendships 
after all these years of sharp party warfare and personal 
hostilities?" 

' ' Oh heavens, yes ! ' ' exclaimed the old gentleman, ' ' my 
life has been full of delightful friendships. The poet who 
said friendship was but a name didn't deserve to have a 
friend. Notwithstanding all the setbacks, I have found 
the world full of sunshine, generosity, good deeds, grati- 
tude, self denial, for the benefit of others. Heavens ! yes ! 
I do believe in human nature and the general excellence of 
men." 

Here Mr. "Weed called his servant, and had his now cold 
cup of tea changed for a hot one, while I withdrew, leaving 
him to finish his repast. 



Gorringe Removing the Great Obelisk. 

When I arrived in Alexandria, says George Wright, the 
needle had been taken down, and Commander Gorringe 
was building a caisson or flat-boat on which to launch it 
into the Wfi'er and carry it to the dry-dock wliere it was to 



52 a:n^ecdotes 

be shipped. Previously, when the machinerr for taldng it 
down was arranged, evil-disposed persons in the city were 
confident that the trunnions and towers, which, they sarcas- 
tically said, were built by people in America who knew 
. nothing about removing obelisks, would not bear so great 
a weight, and up to the moment when the obelisk turned 
easily on its axis, they predicted a crash. In this they 
were disappointed, so their next hope of a failure was 
placed on the launching. The obelisk stood on a plot of 
land, which had formerly been a stone yard, between the 
Boulevard de Ramleh and the Great harbor, a little to the 
northwest of the Kamleh railway station and almost in 
the center of the business portion of the city. At this 
point the land is between ten and fifteen feet above tide- 
water mark. Here Commander Gorringe excavated a slip 
similar to a ship builder's yard, and on it built the caisson. 
When this was completed, the obelisk was rolled on, and 
together they were launched into the harbor. There were 
^ great number of people present, the majority of whom 
came to witness an accident to the stone — the general 
•opinion being that the caisson would not carry the weight 
from the land to the water. 

When they got off the w^ays, there was great cheering 
and rejoicing and a general revulsion of feeling. And 
after that, everybody expressed a hope that the obelisk 
might get to America in safety, because Commander Gor- 
ringe had overcome all obstacles so successfully. 

It was towed to a floating dry dock situated on the other 
side of the promontory, which constitutes a part of Alex- 
andria and divides the two harbors. The dock was sunk 
and the caisson admitted. When the dock was raised 
again, the caisson was taken to pieces and the obelisk was 
jacked up to about five or ten feet. After this was accom- 
plished, the dock was sunk again, and the Dessouk was 



OF NOTED PEESONS. 53 

admitted and placed with her bow alongside the monolith. 
A section of the starboard side of the steamer, beginning 
about twenty feet aft of the bow, and extending for about 
seventy-five feet, and about ten feet deep, was taken out, 
and through this aperture the obelisk was shipped." 

The Alexandrians did not like the removal at first, and 
a great deal of dissatisfaction was expressed, as it was one 
of the very best obelisks in the country — a great feature in 
Alexandria." The feeling was, that an old landmark and 
ornament to the city was being taken away. They would 
rather have it go to America, however, than to any place 
in Europe. 



Anecdotes of the Emperor Napoleon. --Only a Cape 
and a Sword. 

Napoleon I. never forgot anything — least of all, the 
days of his poverty and the slights he then received. When 
he first paid court to Madam de Beauharnais, neither was 
rich enough to keep a carriage, and the young hero, who 
was deeply in love, often gave the charming widow his 
arm when she went to visit her man of business, a notary 
named Raguideau. Madam, who had great confidence in 
this legal adviser, who was a friend as well, went to see 
him immediately after engagement to Bonaparte, who, as 
usual, accompanied her, but, from motives of delicacy, 
did not enter the notary's cabinet, but remained in an 
adjoining room, where several clerks were writing. .The 
door being imperfectly closed, he here heard nearly all 
that was said during the interview, and especially the 
arguments used by Raguideau to deter Madam de Beau- 
harnais from the marriage she acknowledged herself she 
was about to contract. 

"Mark my words, madam," said the notary earnestly, 



54: ANECDOTES 

''you are about to commit a great folly, of which you will 
bitterly repent. Why, this man you are about to espouse, 
has nothing in the world but a cape and a sword !" 

Eight years after, Napoleon, on the day of his corona. 
on, as soon as he was invested with his imperial robes, 
said : 

" Let them seek Raguideau. Plave him come instantly. 
I have something to say to him. ' ' 

The notary was brought, and stood much astonished 
efore the Emperor, who, with his peculiar sardonic smile, 
said to him : 

"jS'A hlen, monsieur, have I nothing in the world but a 
cape and a sword ? " 



Joaquin Miller's Experience on Wall Street — What he 
Made and Lost. 

Wall street? How did I come out? Oh! Well, I was 
short of St. Paul and long of Pacific Mail. I expected 
Pacific Mail to go up and St. Paul to go down. They did, 
and I had twenty-one thousand dollars. But that was not 
enough to build a city with. I held on. 

One day it was rumored that the rust was not so bad in 
St. Paul after all. It began to start up ! Pacific Mail be- 
gan to shoot down. It was said the Chinese had estab- 
lished an opposition line. I tell you it takes a big man to 
sit on two benches at a time. Ten to one he will spill 
himself between the two just as sure as he attempts it. 

I sold some St. Paul and bought more Pacific Mail ; but 
all to no purpose. They kept right on. Then I got out of 
Pacific Mail at the lowest figure it touched, and bought 
Wabash. I began to flounder, and got frightened. I sold 
and bought, and bought and sold. I frequently saw in the 
papers, that I was getting rich in Wall street, and kept on 



OF NOTED PERSONS. 65 

working like a beaver. The end was only a question of 
time. 

One day my broker took me by the sleeve, and led me, 
like a lamb as I was, aside. My fun was over. And 
Utopia is indeed Utopia. 

No one with so little money ever entered Wall street 
under better advantages. All men were kind and good. 
I think no man there ever attempted to mislead me. But 
it is simply impossible to make money there and keep it. 
Let me mention here, that during my six months there, I 
paid my brokers, in commissions, $11,425 ! These com- 
missions alone, will devour my possible profits. 

Of course, it is not a pleasant thing to admit oneself 
beaten. But if this brief history of my venture in the 
dangerous land will diminish at all that tired and anxious 
army of tape-holders, who waste their shekels, their days, 
their strength in vain waiting — why, I willingly bear the 
reproach. 

And, after all, I lost but little, having but little to lose. 
And I learned so much, having so much to learn. 



Czar Nicholas and his Doctor. 

On the 2d of March, 1855, when it was known that the 
Czar Nicholas had died, a wild excitement, increasing from 
day to day, burst forth against his favorite physician, Dr. 
Mandt, the more readily suspected because he was a Ger- 
man. Busy calumniators spread the news abroad in all 
circles, that the guilt of the Emperor's death lay at the 
door of his Prussian doctor. Mandt' s family, who were 
then at Frankfort, were in the greatest terror, when their 
fear was removed by a dispatch from St. Petersburg, stat- 
ing that the present Czar, Alexander, had taken up the 
defence of the calumniated man, having called him into 



56 ANECDOTES 

his presence, thanked him before the court for his care of 
his father, and presented him with a magnificent gold 
snuff-box, richly set with diamonds. 

The Doctor, it appears, left behind him a detailed account 
of the last days and hours of his imperial patient. Almost 
his only friends at court, besides the Czar himself, were 
the heir to the throne and the Grand Duchess Helena. 
He was an object of violent dislike to her husband, the 
Grand Duke Michael. When the Czar was taken ill, 
Mandt's meaner foes whispered about, that he would poison 
their master. The Grand Duchess Helena warned him of 
the plots against his reputation and person. Her husband 
called him into ,a private room. "I found him in the 
highest excitement," says Dr. Mandt. "I thought he 
would seize me by the collar, but my coolness seemed to 
make some impression upon him, and he contented him- 
self by shaking his fist in my face, and exclaiming, ' Trai- 
tor!'" An excited conversation passed between them, 
and the Prince ended by saying: "On the day upon 
which the precious health of the Czar is endangered by 
your treatment, your learned head shall hang upon your 
neck by the thinness of a single thread." 

Nicholas himself was worked up into a temporary suspi- 
cion of the fidelity of his doctor. One day, upon feeling 
himself better, the Czar said : "Mandt, do you know that 
I believed yesterday that you were bent upon poisoning 
me? " "I knew it, sire," replied the Doctor. Then do 
not forget," observed the Emperor, "that you have ene- 
mies here, and many of them." On the night of the 2d of 
March, Mandt had to tell the Czar the fateful news, that his 
recovery was impossible. N'icholas received the informa- 
tion with great calmness. He ordered the sacrament to 
be brought, took leave of the Empress, his children and 
grandchildren, kissed them, and blessed each by name 



OF NOTED PERSONS. 57 

with a film, clear voice. To the Empress he said: "I 
shall send for thee when the last moment draws nigh." 



General Jackson's Death. 

There is still living iu Tennessee, a colored woman, 
" Old Hannah," in whose arms tho wife of General Jack- 
son died, and who was present at the General's death-bed. 
She is now eighty-nine years old, and still does service as 
a nnrse. To a correspondent of the Cincinnati Commercial 
who visited her, she gave the following account of Gen- 
eral Jackson's death : 

" Ole Master was sick when he came home from Wash- 
ington last time. Tie had a bad cough, but I never saw 
him bleed at the lungs, as they say he did, and I was with 
him or about him all the time. His feet would swell, 
sometimes, but he said it was from sittin' so much. He 
used to smoke and chew more than anyone I ever saw, 
and it gave him headache, he said. About three 3-ears 
beforedie died, he was at breakfast one morning, a:id was 
taken sick and left the table. TVe thought he had swal- 
lowed a fish-bone. He never ate in the dining-room after 
that. I always toted his meals to him. He had a little 
table he could eat off when sick, as it could be swung 
round to him. 

"During the last year of his life, his breakfast was a raw 
egg beaten up with brown sugar, and milk i'ight from the 
cow. About eleven o'clock, hot corn griddle-cakes, and a 
glass of fresh buttermilk, which he liked very much, was 
taken to him. On Friday morning before he died, he ate 
as common. On Saturday, when I fetched him his egg 
and milk, he was lying on the bed with his eyes closed, 
and did not move. I asked George if he was asleep. 
Ole Master then opened his eyes, and I handed him the 



58 ANECDOTES 

glass. He held it in his hand a little while looking at me, 
and said : ' Well, Hannah, you will soon be done bringing 
this to your old master. ' He spoke very feeble. When I 
got back to the kitchen, I tole Betty and Dick, the cooks, 
that ole Master would not last long. Dick spoke up in his 
sassy way and says: 'Oh, you think you are a prophet. 
Ole Master will see the goose that will raise the goslin' 
that will eat the grass off of your grave.' 

"On Sunday, the day of his death, when I brought his 
egg and milk, he could not drink it. His eyes looked so 
curious that I went out and told Mistus Sarah. She ran to 
the store room, got some brandy, loaf sugar and spice, 
burned the brandy and carried it to him. He took one or 
two teaspoonfuls and it revived him, but he didn't speak 
the whole day. The doctor said to Mistus Sarah to send 
the servants out of the room, but we refused to go. One 
of the servants went on so, cryin' and lamentin', she had to 
be carried out. 

"About an hour before he died, he come to. We had 
all thought he was gone before that. Young Master 
Andrew leaned over him and said, ' Father, do you know 
me?' 'Oh, yes, my son, I know you.' Then Dick, the 
cook, asked if he knew him. He nodded that he did, and 
said, 'Richard, hand me my specs.' He always called 
him Kichard. They were handed to him from the bureau. 
Ole Master wet them with his tongue, wiped them with the 
sheet, and put them on. He looked around at us all and 
said: 'Where's poor George and Hannah? I have it 
that you shall be taken care of He saw Mrs. Adams, 
young Mistress' sister, who lived in the family. She was 
standing by, crying. He said to her: 'Mrs. Adams, 
while a bit of my property is left, you may call it yours.' 
He then turned to us all again and said : ' I want you all to 
meet me in heaven. My words are for you aU. Qod is no 



OF NOTED PERSONS. 59 

respecter of color. I hope to be saved through the blood 
of Christ. I am in God and God is in me. He dwelleth 
in me and I in Him. ' I shall never forget it. I have often 
tried to say it myself when near death's door, but shrank 
back for fear I was unworthy. Yes, he's np yonder, he's 
up yonder," continued the old creature excitedly; "he's 
met my husband, and I shall soon meet them both." 

"While saying these words, he was propped up on 
pillows. He asked to have them drawn out. Young 
Mistus cried, ']S"o, don't, George, don't!' but Master gave 
George a look which showed he meant it should be done. 
George took two out. Old Master sighed, hunched up his 
shoulders, drew just one breath, and all was over. There 
was no struggle. Young Mistus fainted and was carried 
to her room. The darkies could not be driven out. Our 
master, our father was gone. "We looked upon him as 
thougb we had as much right there as Master Andrew." 



One of Anna Dickinson's Southern Experiences. 

A CiNCiNisrATi reporter, interviewing Anna Dickinson, re- 
ports her as saying she had been lecturing on "Joan of 
Arc" in Savannah, and was requested by a committee of 
gentlemen, residents of that city, to let the people here her 
on some topic on which she had lectured in the North. 
She agreed to do so, and chose " Compulsory Education" 
for her topic. 

In her lecture, she gave some statistics concerning the 
State she was lecturing in, and, she says, her audience be- 
came impatient and angry, and some of them (among 
others, several of the gentlemen who had requested her to 
deliver the lecture) were leaving the room, when she inter- 
rupted the lecture, and addressing several by name, called 
their attention to the fact that she had only yielded to them 



60 anecdotes' 

in delivering the lecture. Said she: " I told them that, 
hearing me give the statistics of crime and misery in their 
State, their feelings were aroused against me because I 
was from the ISTorth, and that, though they had sat calmly 
while one of their own number gave the same facts, they 
rebelled against them as given by me, because I was a 
ITorthern woman. I told them to forget this ; to think of 
me as an American, and one of themselves, not as Georg- 
ians, but as Americans, and they would feel none of this 
resentment. I reminded them that we were all Americans, 

and, calling one byname, I asked: 'General , if a 

British hostile fleet appeared off our coast, or a French 
army was marching across Mexico to attack our f"ontier, 
who would be the first man to leave Savannah to prevent 
the invasion?' I had hardly asked the question when my 
audience burs 
enthusiasm." 



Horace Greeley Bathing in a Horse Trough. 

Horace Greeley at one time owned 2, 500 acres of land 
in Pike County, Pa. In 1843 he formed the Sylvanian 
Society, and established a community on the property 
after the plan of Fourier, the French social economist. 
Large buildings were erected, and at one time 125 persons 
were active members of the Society. Mr. Greeley invested 
$10,000 in the enterpvise, but it was a disastrous failure. 
He believed that he had been made the victim of land- 
sharks and the ultra Democratic views of the Pike County 
natives. This inspired him to publish in the editorial 
columns of the Tribune^ several bitter articles against that 
county, in one of which occurred two expressions that the 
Pike Countians never forgave. "Pike County," said Mr. 
Greeley, "is noted only for its scrub oaks, its locofoco 



OF NOTED PEKSONS. 61 

majorities, and its rattlesnakes. There are five gallons of 
whisky to one spelling-book in Pike County." 

Once, before the Fourierite Society had failed, Mr. 
Greeley paid a visit to the spot. On his way back to I^ew 
York, the stage-coach broke down several miles from 
Milford. Mr. Greeley walked the rest of the way to this 
village. He arrived here in the condition of a confirmed 
tramp. "Uncle Sammy" Dimmick kept hotel there then. 
He was one of the dozen or so of "Whigs that dared the 
Democratic forces in the place. He was a blufi", curt man, 
but kind and generous. Horace Greeley was his idol. 
He had never seen him, but often declared that he would 
consider it the proudest moment of his life to meet the 
great "Whig editor. When Mr. Greeley entered the vil- 
lage after his long and dusty tramp, he chanced to stop at 
Dimmick' s tavern. Uncle Sammy was in the bar-room, 
and in one of his worst humors. Mr. Greeley walked up 
to him, and, in his peculiar falsetto voice, said : 

"I am very tired and dusty, sir. I would like to have 
a room where I can wash my feet. ' ' 

Uncle Sammy looked the seedy and dirty stranger from 
head to foot. Believing him to be an impudent tramp, he 
bellowed out in a voice that could be heard over half the 
town: 

"A room to wash your feet in! Why, you impudent 
scoundrel, go out to the horse-trough and wash your feet!" 

A large public trough stood in the street at the corner 
of the hotel. Mr. Greeley walked quietly out to it, took 
off his boots, and began washing his feet in the trough. 
Cornelius W. De Witt, father of John E. De Witt, the 
well-known New York insurance President, at that time 
kept a store opposite Dimmick' s tavern. He was also 
a Wliig, and knew Mr. Greeley. He saw the man at 
the trough washing his foet, and Uncle Sammy standing 



62 ANECDOTES 

on the hotel piazza lOoking at him with intense disgust. 
De Witt walked over, recognized Mr. Greeley, and at once 
gave words to his surprise. He beckoned Uncle Sammy 
to the spot. 

"Mr. Dimmick," he said, "I want to introduce you to 
Horace G-reeley, the editor of the New York Tribune^ 

Uncle Sammy never recovered from the mortification 
he felt over his treatment of the man he would have gone 
a hundred miles to do honor to. Mr. Greeley took the 
matter good-naturedly, and spent several days with his 
Whig admirer. 



How Sam Houston Happened to Go to Texas. 

An Arkansas paper says: "During Sam Houston's 
residence in the Cherokee Nation, west of Arkansas, he 
lived with a daughter of old Captain John Eogers, an 
Indian, about two and a half miles west of Fort Gibson. 
He was a merchant, but tried to conform to the ways and 
habits of the Indians, and in dress wore the hunting-shirt, 
buckskin leggings and breech-clout of the Indians. For 
the greater part of his stay here, he was under the influence 
of liquor when it could be had, and he was seldom with- 
out it. He seemed, after a residence of two years, to tire 
of the part he was acting, and during short periods of 
soberness became morose and sullen. He was evidently 
comparing in his mind his present mode of life with the 
past, or a worthless arunken white Indian with the proud 
Governor of Tennessee. 

It was directly after one of his long drunken sprees, that 
some of the Texas Cherokees brought news of the war be- 
tween Texas and Mexico. Houston, although not yet 
sober, walked out on the banks of the Grand Kiver with 
John Henry, a merchant. Throwing himself down on the 



OF NOTED PERSONS. 63 

ground, he was silent for some time. At length, starting 
np quickly, he said : 

"Henry, let us go to Texas. I am tired of this country 
and this life. Go with me, and I will make a fortune for 
us both. You a merchant! I a merchant! We are no 
more fit for merchants than h — 1 is for a powder house. I 
am going. In that new State, I will make a man of my- 
self again." 

He began at once making preparation for the (at that 
time) long journey. Casting at once aside all his Indian 
attire, he came out dressed as a white man, and, at once re- 
fusing the use of liquor ofiered him frequently, as if by 
the stroke of the magician's wand, he looked the man and 
hero he very soon became after his arrival in Texas. 



Great Men Testing Their Wits. 

An anecdote is told at the expense of the late Yiolet-le- 
Duc, who, after having been an attache of the imperial 
court, became a republican municipal councilor, which has 
been told of other people before him. 

One of the amusements at Compiegne, was writing a lot 
of questions on cards, which were then shufiled together 
and drawn one at a time to tax the wits of the company in 
provoking off-hand witty answers. 

The Emperor happened while playing at this game to 
draw the question, " How would you distinguish between 
truth and falsehood?" 

"Make them go through the same door," said Kapo- 
leon ; "the lie would be first through." 

At that moment the door opened and in came M. Yiolet- 
le-Duc, followed by Napoleon's faithful friend, D. Con- 



64 ANECDOTES 

Some Strange Things which Great Men Have 
DisHked. 

Eeasmus, who was a native of Rotterdam, had. so great 
an aversion to fish, that he could not even smell it without 
being in a fever. If we may credit Ambro.se Pare, a man 
of some celebrity, he says he could never sit at a table 
where eels were served up, without fainting. Joseph 
Scaliger never drank milk, Garden could not bear eggs, 
Julius Csesar Scaliger had an antipathy to cresses ; Ulad- 
istas Jagelon, a Polish King, hated apples ; and when 
Du Chesne, Secretary to Francis I., smelt them, they oc- 
casioned his nose to bleed. Henry III. could not remain 
in a room where there was a cat ; the same aversion was 
observed in Marshal Shomberg, Governor of Languedoc. 

The Emperor Ferdinand introduced a gentleman to the 
Cardinal de Lorraine at Innspruck, whose fear of cats was 
so powerful, that when he heard them mew at a distance, 
blood spurted from his nose. M. de Laucre says, that he 
knew a gentleman whose fear of the hedgehog was ex- 
cessive, and who believed that that animal had actually 
been preying on his entrails for more than two years. He 
also relates another story, equally singular, of a gentle- 
man whose bravery none disputed, but who was so nerv- 
ous when a mouse appeared, that he could not take out his 
sword to destroy it. M. Yaughneim, the King's hunts- 
man in Hanover, fainted when he saw a roasted pig. The 
philosopher Chrysippas hated bows so much, that when 
he was saluted he fell down. 

There are persons who cannot tolerate the sight of 
spiders, and there are those who eat them for amusement. 
A friend of mine, a gentleman brave as the best, fainted 
when vaccinated a few months ago. He could not account 
for it, he said, as of course there was no pain, neither did 
he feel any repugnance. 



OF NOTED PERSONS. 65 

A Zach Chandler Story. 

The recent anniversary of the birth of Lincoln prompts 
a resident of Washington to relate in a newspaper of that 
city a striking incident of the civil war, in which the late 
Zachary Chandler played a prominent part. 

The Washingtonian was walking in the avenue, just after 
the first battle of Bull Kun had filled the town with dismay 
and despondency, and chanced to encounter Chandler, 
greatly excited over the disastrous defeat, and swearing like 
a Templar. 

The Senator seized him by the arm — the two had been 
friends for years, — and said: " Let's go right up and see 
Lincoln. Something's got to be done, or the country's 
gone sure." 

In a few minutes they entered the White House, and 
found Lincoln — he had evidently been weeping — with his 
wife, in the blue room, in a state of agitation. The Presi- 
dent held out his hand, exclaiming : 

"My God, Chandler, I'm glad to see you. We are 
ruined, ruined. What shall be done?" 

"Done?" echoed the Senator. "What must be done 
is this : You must write out a proclamation at once, calling 
for three hundred thousand men." 

Lincoln expostulated. He had not yet had a cabinet 
meeting, but he was to have one that evening. 

"We can't wait," argued Chandler; "we must have 
the proclamation immediately. It will give confidence 
to the nation. Without it we'll be in anarchy before a 
week. Come, Mr. President, there's not a minute to lose," 
and he urged Lincoln to a desk on which writing materials 
lay. "I'll wait for the document and take it to the Asso- 
ciated Press, and to-morrow it will be over the country." 

The proclamation was hurriedly written out and carried 
off by Chandler. 



STARTLING STORIES. 



The Falls of Niagara Dry for a Whole Day. 

The Eight Rev. Bishop Fuller gives the following re- 
markable story of Niagara Falls: "The Falls of Niagara 
were Oiflce dry for a whole day. That day was the 31st of 
March, 1848. I did not witness it myself, but I was told 
of it the next day by my late brother-in-law, Thomas C. 
Street, Esq., M. P. 

" Happening to go out to his place the next day, he told 
me that his miller (for he has a grist mill on the rapids 
above the falls) knocked at his bedroom door about five 
o'clock in the morning of that day, and told him to get up, 
as there was no water in the mill-race, and no water in the 
great river outside of the race. 

*'He said he was startled at the intelligence, and hurried 
out as soon as he could dress himself, and then saw the 
river, on the edge of which he had been born thirty-four 
years before, dry. After a hurried breakfast, he said his 
youngest daughter (then married) went down about three- 
quarters of a mile to the precipice itself, over which there 
was so little water running that, having provided himself 
with a strong pole, they started from Table Rock and 
walked near the edge of the precipice about one-third of 
the way toward Goat Island, on the American shore, and 
having stuck this pole in a crevice of the rock, and Miss 



4 STAKTLIXG STOEIES. 

Street having tied her pocket-handkerchief firmly on the 
top of the pole, thej returned. He said he then turned 
his view toward the river below the falls, and saw the water 
so shallow that immense jagged rocks stood up in such a 
frightful manner that he shuddered when he thought of his 
having frequently passed over them in the little Maid of the 
Mist (as I often have done.) 

"He then turned toward home and drove toward the 
Canada shore one-half mile above the Falls toward Goat 
Island. "When he told me this he reproached himself very 
much for not having sent out for me about eight miles dis- 
tant, but he said that though he had several times intended 
doing so, he each time concluded not to do it lest, before 
we could reach the wonderful scene, the waters should have 
returned to their old courses. Of course, everybody was 
speaking of the wonderful event when I was out there next 
day, and I have heard others who witnessed it speak of it 
since that time. 

"So far can I testify to the evidence of the fact at the 
time of its occurrence. 

"Mr. Street's theory was this: that the winds had been 
blowing down Lake Erie, which is only about thirty feet 
deep, and rushing a great deal of the water from it over the 
falls, and suddenly changed and blew this little water 
(comparatively speaking) up to the western portion of the 
lake ; and at this juncture the ice on Lake Erie, which had 
been broken up by these high winds, got jammed in the 
river between Buffalo and Canada side and formed a dam 
which kept back the water of Lake Erie a whole day." 

When this remarkable stcry was first told by the Bishop, 
it was almost too startling for human credulity and was 
doubted, whereupon the Bishop secured the following sworn 
testimony, taken before J. F. Macklan, notary public. May, 
17, 1880: 



STARTLING STORIES. 5 

" I, Henry Bond, of the village of Chippewa, in the 
countj of Welland, blacksmith, do solemnly declare that I 
well remember the occurrence of there having been a day 
during which so little water was running in the Niagara 
Iliver that but a small stream was flowing over the Falls of 
Niagara during that day. It happened on or about the 
31st day of March, A. D. 1848; and I remember riding on 
horseback from below the flouring mills and cloth factory 
of the late Thomas C. Street, Esq., out into the bed of 
the river, and so on down outside of Cedar Island to Table 
Rock. Farther up the Niagara River, at the village of 
Chippewa, where the Welland River empties into the Ni- 
agara, there was so little water running that the Welland 
was nearly dry, only a very little stream running in the 
centre. I recollect a number of old giin-barrels having 
been found in the bed of the Welland River at its junction 
with the Niagara River, supposed to have been thrown 
into the river during the war of 1812. Henry Boistd. " 



A Singular Duel with Pianos. 

The Imparcial, of Madrid, publishes the following start- 
ling account of a terrible duel at Valparaiso. A quarrel 
between two rival professors of music led to a challenge, 
the instrument selected being neither pen nor sword, but 
the piano. The conditions of the "encounter" were that 
neither party should eat or drink until honor should be de- 
clared duly satisfled, and that no waltzes or other lively 
airs should be indulged in. 

Seconds were appointed, and the duel proceeded without 
intermission for forty-eight hours, at the end of which time 
one of the musicians, after playing a "Miserere" for the 
one hundred and fiftieth time, fell forward and sank ex- 
hausted to the floor. 



D STAKTLING STOKIES. 

He was taken up a corpse. His adversary liad been lit- 
erally transformed into an "enraged musician," and was 
in that state transferred to the hospital. The seconds 
themselves gave signs of being seriously "touched," and 
each of the pianos was found to be in a hopelessly crazy 
condition. Such at least is the result of the medical ex- 
amination. 



A Dive for Life. 



Just below the Kanawha Falls, in West Virginia, writes 
a correspondent of the Louisville Courier- Journal^ is an 
overhanging rock of immense size, jotting out about one 
hundred feet over the seething whirlpool and about the 
same height above. This was once the scene of a remark- 
able adventure. 

The Indians were in hot pursuit of Van Bibber, a settler 
and a man of distinction in those early times. He was 
hard pressed, and all access to the river below and above 
being cut off, he was driven to this jutting rock, which 
proved to be the jumping-off place for him. He stood on 
the rock, in full view of the enemy above and below, who 
yelled like demons at the certainty of his speedy capture. 
He stood up boldly, and with his rifle kept them at bay. 
As he stood there he looked across the river — saw bis 
friends — his wife with her babe in her arms, all helpless to 
render assistance. They stood as if petrified with terror 
and amazement. She cried at the top of her voice : 

"Leap into the river and meet me !" Laying her babe 
on the grass she seized the oars and sprang into the skiff 
alone. As she neared the middle of the river her husband 
saw the Indians coming in full force and yelling like de- 
mons. 

"Wife, wife!" he screamed, "I'm coming; drop down 



STARTLING STOKIES. 



a little lower." With this he sprang from his crag and 
descended like an arrow into the water, feet foremost. 

The wife rested on her oars a moment to see him rise to 
the surface, the little canoe floating like a cork, bobbing 
about on the boiling flood. It was an awful moment ; it 
seemed an age to her ; would he ever rise ? Her earnest 
gaze seemed to penetrate the depths of the water, and she 
darted her boat further down the stream. He rose near 
her ; in a moment the canoe was alongside of him, and she 
helped him to scramble into it amid a shower of arrows 
and shot that the baffled Indians poured into them. The 
daring wife did not speak a word ; her husband was more 
dead than alive, and all depended on her strength being 
maintained till they could reach the bank. This they did 
just where she had started, right where the babe was still 
lying, crowing and laughing. The men pulled the skiff 
high up on the sand, and the wife slowly rose and helped to 
lift Yan Bibber to his feet. He could not walk, but she 
laid him down by his babe, and then, seating herself, she 
wept wildly, just as any woman would have done under the 
circumstances. That babe is now a grandfather, and that 
rock is called Yan Bibber' s^Rock to this day. 



Strange Dreams. 



Gustave Brooke, the day before he left London to em- 
bark in the ill-fated steamer upon which he was to have 
sailed to Australia, met his friend Greeves at a favorite 
resort in the Strand. 

"So you are really off to-morrow ? — but not for long, I 
imagine?" 

"Yes," said the tragedian, in an unusually grave tone; 
''yes, I am afraid I may never return." 



8 STAKTLI^'G STOEIES. 

"JSTonsense ! "What makes you have such a gloomy idea 
as that?" 

" I'll tell you, Greeves. I had a strange dream last 
night. It was this. I dreamed that some fellow — an 
author — came to me with the manuscript of a play, and 
wanted to sell it to me. I saw in great letters upon the 
cover of the first act the title. It was 'The Wreck.' I 
turned over a few pages and came to a sketch in ink of the 
closing tableaux, intended to illustrate the way in which 
the stage should be set. Standing upon the deck of a 
sinking vessel was a man clinging to the rigging. The 
despairing face of that man was a perfect reproduction ot 
my own features. The sight of that agonized face, so per- 
fect a picture of myself, frightened me out of my sleep. 
Greeves, I tell you that dream means something serious." 

"Pshaw!" said Greeves. "It means too late hours 
and too late dinners." 

Brooke went his way, and met the verification of the 
vision of his slumber. 

"I am going, my boy," said N. B. Clarke to a brother 
professional who entered the dying man's apartment just as 
the physician departed : "I am going." 

"Nonsense!" was the reply. "You're good for many 
years yet." 

' ' Am I ? You think so, do you ? Last night my wife 
had three lights burning in this room, — three lights," he 
repeated faintly, "and that means — death.' 

A few hours after that, surely enough, death rang down 
his life-curtain upon the last scene of all. 

Edmund Kean once wrote from London to a friend in 
Dublin: "I am glad you do not believe in such omens. 
For my part, I scarcely know whether I should or not, 
were I the victim of such nightmares. I never had but one 
such dream, and that was on the night poor B. died. It 



BTABTLING STOEIES. 9 

seemed not unnatural that he should come to me in my 
sleep, attired in his grave-clothes, the more readily when 
you know that I had been thinking of his deplorable con- 
dition an hour before I slept. I had fallen asleep at 11 
o'clock, on my mantel shelf, and I awoke half an hour 
after. In that brief space I had the dream, and in that 
hour, almost to the moment, B., as I next day learned, died. 
Was that his spirit — that shrouded form — or my imagina- 
tion ? I leave you to solve the question," 

To Macready the sight of the toad in his dreams gave 
him more nervous anxiety for hours after than could "the 
substance of ten thousand men armed in proof, and led by 
shallow Bichmond.'''' One day, at a Drury Lane rehearsal, 
Mr. Kyder said to the great tragedian : 

"Mr. Macready, I had a queer dream last night — very 
queer — I saw sitting on a huge rock a ' ' 

"Great God! — ah — a — a toad ?" exclaimed Macready, 
paling at the very thought ot it. 

"Toad — no, a pair of gigantic bull-frogs doing the fen- 
cing-scene in ' Hamlet.' " 

The great interpreter of Lear turned away in disgust at 
the overtopping of his toad omen. 

David Garrick regarded the appearance of a sword or 
knives in a dream, as an omen of impending danger. 

A week or two before his death, George Frederick 
Cooke had a " distempered vision" of a scene in "Kichard 
III.," — the scene in which the coffin of the dead king is 
brought on. He thought, as he in the dream uttered the 
lines, "Stay, you that bear the corpse," etc., that there 
suddenly appeared on the black velvet pall, in white letters, 
his own name. It is possible, however, that Cooke's vision 
may have been the result of an over-feasting and a super- 
fluity of " great draughts of Rhenish" or other equally 
potent spirit at the old Shades, in Thames street, which, in 



10 STAKTLINQ STORIES. 

his time, was the resort of all " good fellows and true " of 
the town. Poor Cooke. He lies quiet enough now in the 
old churchyard on Yesey street and Broadway. 

Lucille Western had something of faith in the weird 
signs and forerunners that come when least expected 
"from out the vague and boundless dreamland." She once 
informed an intimate friend that she knew, a month before 
the sad event occurred, that her sister Helen, when play- 
ing in Philadelphia, was soon to die, or meet with some 
fearful accident. 

"I saw the whole scene of her death — the room, the 
persons at the bedside, the very color of the walls, the posi- 
tion of the windows, and her face as she lifted up her head 
for the last time — I saw it all, and I shall never forget that 
dream and its fearful realization as long as I live." 

"If you ever stumble the first time you enter the theatre 
in which you are engaged, you can make up your mind 
either your stay will be short or you'll have trouble," said 
a veteran comedian, the other evening. "You may laugh 
as much as you like at it, but it's so ; and a trip on the car- 
pet while you're on the stage means — well, it means more 
than a fall or a bruised knee in trying to save yourself. 
You remember Amy Fawcett ? She stumbled on her first 
entrance the first night she played at the Fifth Avenue, and 
in three months she died almost friendless and forsaken. 



Goose-Bone Weather Predictions. 

The goose-bone is more closely watched in Kentucky, 
says the Louisville Commercial^ than in any other part of 
the country. It has been handed down among the early 
traditions of the State, and may be called the Kentucky 
weather-prophet. It is to be found in nearly every Ken- 
tucky country-home, and in many parts of the State the 



STARTLING STORIES. 11 

farmers consult it, and prepare for handling their crops in 
accordance with its readings. The prophecy of the goose- 
bone does not extend beyond the year in which the goose 
was hatched, and the prediction is for the three winter 
months only. Take the breast-bone of a last spring's goose 
and divide it into three equal parts, and the different 
divisions will represent December, January and February. 
The breast-bone of a goose is translucent, and, if clear when 
held up to the light, the weather will be mild and pleasant; 
but, if covered with cloud-like blots, it will be gloomy and 
cold ; the heavier the blots, the colder will be the weather. 



A Remarkable Blind Man. 

James Goodsell, of Burlington, says the "Waterbury 
American, from his birth, during a life of nearly 90 years, 
had been totally blind. In early childhood, however, Mr. 
Goodsell had said that the darkness was in a few instances 
broken by faint glimmerings of light. Of four children, 
he and a sister were blind, the others could see. The sister, 
though at first possessed of ordinary vision, soon by a mys- 
terious change, became wholly deprived of sight. 

In absolute darkness, the ordinary employment of work- 
a-day life would seem impracticable, but this bhnd man 
would swing an ax with the dexterity of a woodsman, and 
actually felled trees ; he was an accomplished grain-thresher, 
and would frequently go alone a distance of two miles to 
thresh for the Burlington farmers, climbing the mows to 
throw down the grain ; he could hoe corn or garden stuff 
as well as anybody, having no trouble to distinguish the 
weeds; he would set a hundred bean poles with more 
accuracy than most people who can see, would load hay 
beautifully, and was so good a mechanic that he manufac- 



12 STARTLING STOBIES. 

tured yokes and other fiirm articles with success. He had 
an excellent memory and was an authority on facts and 
dates. He could generally tell the time of day or night 
within a few minutes. 

One instance is given when he slept over one day and 
awoke at evening, thinking it was morning. For once he 
ate supper for breakfast, but when informed of his mistake 
slept another twelve hours in order to get straight again. 
He was familiar with forest trees, and knew just where to 
go for any timber desired. He could direct men where to 
find a chestnut, a maple or an oak, and the children where 
to go for berries. He was a good mathematician, and could 
compute accurately and rapidly. In olden days he was 
quite musically inclined, and like most blind people, he had 
a genius in that direction. He was at one time leader of 
the Presbyterian choir in that place. For two years he and 
the blind sister kept house together, though she and the 
other members of the family have long since passed away. 



Singular Ideas of the Cross. 

In the west of England, says All the Year Round, there 
is a tradition that the cross was formed of the mistletoe, 
which before that event used to be a fine forest tree, but 
has since been doomed to lead a parasitical existence. The 
Gypsies believe that it was made of the ash tree. The 
nails used at the crucifixion, said to have been found by 
Helena, are reported to have worked many miracles. One 
of them was thrown by her into the Adriatic during a 
storm, and produced a perfect calm. Another, placed in 
the crown or helm of Constantine, was found in a mutilated 
state in the Church of Santa Croce. The third is said to 
be in the possession of the Duemo of Milan, while that of 



STARTLENG STOEIES. 13 

Treves claims the fourth. In the time of Charlemagne a 
new relic was discovered in the shape of a sponge soaked 
in the blood of Christ. In Cheshire the Arum maculatum 
is called "Gethsemane" because it is said to have been 
growing at the foot of the cross, and to have received some 
drops of blood on its petals. The dirpe of Mamre died at 
the crucifixion! "Christ's thorn" is a very common tree 
in Palestine. In Scotland it was formerly believed that the 
dwarf birch is stunted in growth because the rods with 
which Christ was scourged were made from it. These are 
the popular ideas of the material of the cross, some of 
which will, perhaps, never be entirely obliterated until the 
last great day, when "all things shall be made plain." 



A Singular Congregation in an Old Church. 

It is four o'clock, and the sun begins to lower, so that its 
slant rays peer in through the windows of the old church 
in a quiet hamlet of Old Virginia, broken by the shadows 
of the Cottonwood trees beside it, that have stood there 
half a century. 

There is still a lazy chirp and busy whirr of bird and in- 
sect, mingled with the sound of the tiny stream that tinkles 
over the stones, telling in its garrulous way a long, long 
tale to all the flowers adown the valley. 

But inside the widely opened door one sees no orderly 
congregation of worshipers, no man of God in the high, 
old-fashioned pulpit, nor hears the sound of solemn psalm 
or holy chant. In the square pew where the De Lacys 
were wont to sit for generations gone, are boards and blan- 
kets laid across, supporting wounded — nay, dying men. 
In yonder slip, where the bright eyes of Lily Mason used 
to wander sadly from the speaker, lies a lonely German, 



14 STARTLING STOEIES. 

muttering in his troubled dreams the visions of his father- 
land, which he shall never see again. 

In the pew where General Yjse was wont to sit a rest- 
less hour or two on Sabbath days, lies his college chum 
with a bullet in his shoulder from General Yyse's gun ; but 
he does not know, thank Heaven, whose hand among the 
Confederates sent it there. "Within the altar railing lie 
moaning men with aching limbs and fevered wounds. In 
the pulpit sit the surgeons, preparing draught and lotion, 
knife and bandage, for their work. On the steps loiter one 
or two who have walked through the shadow of the valley, 
and wear its solemn grajness on their faces still. 



Startling Freaks of Figures*. 

In its facetious manner the Norristown Herald says : 

"Figures won't lie," says the poet — whose name has 
slipped our memory. Perhaps not ; but sometimes they 
make most remarkable statements and stand up to their 
work in such a shaky manner that our confidence in their 
veracity is greatly shaken. \ 

A good mnltiplication-table-wrestler will pile up column 
after column of figures to prove that the defeat of his po- 
litical candidate this year by 15,000 majority against 8,000 
last year is a gain for his side of 7,000 votes. 

If such curious ciphering doesn't create a strong suspi- 
cion that the figures lie like the annual statement of a New 
York life-insurance company, it at least leaves an impres- 
sion that they are weak in the limbs, — and often cut a 
pretty figure, figuratively speaking. 

The man who has the multiplication table at his fingers* 
ends, and can foot up a column of figures six inches high 
and two broad as quick as you could pronounce half of a 



8TARTLING STORIES. IB 

name of a Russian General, is a serpent in the social circle, 
— a sort of a boa, or bore, or, — well, he's an adder any- 
how. He is as great a nuisance as the indefatigable bore 
who propounds such questions as this: "Suppose your 
mother's daughter married your grandfather's nephew on 
your uncle's side, what relation would their children be to 
your aunt's step-mother?" — or somehow that way. Ton 
probably have met such bores. 

The multiplication- table man, at the risk of his life, will 
tell you 9 multiplied 387,420,489 times by itself would re- 
quire 389,693,100 ciphers, and to count it, working ten 
hours daily, would take 15 years and 230 days. And then 
you heave a sigh a mile long and wish with all your might 
that he would go off somewhere by himself and work out 
the problem. If to perform this arithmetical task required 
only five years and no days, we don't suppose one of the 
adder's hearer's would go to work at the job. 

The inventor of the game of che^s was bade by the King 
of India to name his own reward, upon which he asked to 
receive the number of grains of wneat that would be pro- 
duced if oue grain were paid him for the first square of 
the chess, two for the second, four for the third, eight for 
the fourth, and so on doubled up for every square of the 
sixty-four. When these amounts were added the sum was 
found to be 18,446,744,073,909,551,615 of grains, "enough 
to cover all the continents of the earth with a layer one- 
third of an inch in thickness. ' ' 

The name of the party who counted the grains is not 
given, but it is highly probable that he stopped count- 
ing at the expiration of the ninety- seventh year, and 
wearily exclaiming, " 'Tis wheat to be remembered," 
guessed at the number remaining. History doesn't say so, 
but it must have gone against the grain of the King 
to fulfill his promise. The whole story, however, sounds 



16 STARTLING STORIES. 

like a campaign lie, invented by the inventor for some sin- 
ister purpose. 

Light, according to Prof. Somebody, travels 192,000 
miles a second. This is much faster than the defaulting 
President of a saving-bank travels. He prefers darkness 
when he goes, and travels at the rate of thirty miles an 
hour, but regrets that he can't make as good time as light. 

Another figure-twister says that if one cent were set out 
at compound interest in the year 1 at 4 per cent., the 1st 
of January, 1866, it would amount to 1 quintillion 201,458 
quadrillions 392 trillions of millions. 

A cent is a very small sum, and we all might set out that 
amount at compound interest for the benefit of our posteri- 
ty eighteen hundred and sixty years hence. But some per- 
sons persistently refuse to do anything for posterity, simply 
because posterity has never done anything for them ! 

The same authority further declares that if we paid the 
Tax Collector the amount above mentioned in silver he 
would need 3,003,445,000,000,000,000,000 wagons for its 
transportation. 

When you owe that much taxes, therefore, you had bet- 
ter pay the collector in greenbacks or checks, for — to quote 
the Professor aforesaid — "a robbery could be committed 
on the hindmost wagon which would not be discovered tiU 
the 24,TS0th generation of tax collectors." 

Hence the tax gleaner, to save his reputation and money, 
and prevent being removed to make room for a man be- 
longing to the opposite political party, would be compelled 
to employ a force larger than the United States army be- 
fore it was cut down to 10,000 men to please Mr. Dana of 
the New York Sun, to travel along with the wagon train 
to protect it from the depredations of road agents — especial- 
ly if he was going in the direction of the Black Hills. 

This sum of money, we are also informed, distributed 



STARTLING STORIES. 17 

among the people of the earth, -would give each of its 
1,000,000,000 of inhabitants about 1, 200 trillions of dollars, 
and he or she could every second use $2,000,000 for 38,- 
096,000 years without reaching the bottom of his or her 
purse ? 

But who wants to spend that much money in that many 
years ? Better give some of it to the poor — though, by the 
way, come to think of it, there would be no poor to receive 
it. Such a distribution, moreover, would not make things 
as pleasant for us as at first sight appears. If everybody 
had an endless purse for 38,096,000 years, nobody could 
be induced to do any work, and we should all be obliged, 
to make our own shirts, and trousers, and things. The 
only alternative would be to go without clothes and join the 
Lydia Thompson ballet troupe. 

Let us remark, parenthetically, that while writing of 
these colossal sums of money we become totally oblivious 
to the hard, sad fact that our own salary is under $28,000 
a year. 

Twenty-four letters of the alphabet can be changed 
620,448,i01,733,239,439,360,000 of times, all of which 
changes could not be written by the population of the whole 
world in 1,000 years. 

A party named Euler says so. 

How he discovered the remarkable fact is not stated. 

We rather surmise that Mr. Euler would feel deeply 
chagrined if the entire population of the earth were to set 
to work and write out all these changes in one-half the time 
he says it would require to perform the task, and thus 
knock over his astounding calculations. 

Again, we are told that twelve persons can interchange 
their respective positions 499,001,600 times; but it would 
take them not less than 1,848 years to accomplish this 
number of changes, if they moved once every minute for 



18 STAKTLING ST0KIE8. 

twelve consecutive hours daily. If any twelve of our read- 
ers doubt the correctness of this statement, they should get 
together and try the experiment. If they perform the task 
in less time than 1,848 years they will please notify us by 
postal card. 

Card-players who have a run of poor cards may be in- 
terested to know that the fifty-two cards, with thirteen to 
each of the four players, can be distributed in. 53,644,737,- 
756,488,792,839,237,440,000 diflPerentways. So if the play- 
er doesn't get a good hand the first deal, he may be more 
successful on the forty-seventh quintillion shuffle, if not 
sooner. This should encourage him to keep his spirits up. 



The Future of the Republic. 

ONE THOUSAND MILLION POPULATION IN 1980. 

Says the London Telegrajph : When, in 1776, the thir- 
teen North American colonies put forth that Declaration of 
Independence which preluded the birth of a" nation, the 
combined white population inhabiting them did not exceed 
2,500,000. Yet they had the courage to throw down the 
gage of battle to a power "with which," in Daniel Web- 
ster's words, "for purposes of foreign conquest and subju- 
gation, Rome, in the height of her glory, was not to be 
compared ; a power which has dotted over the surface of 
the whole globe with her possessions and military posts, 
whose morning drum-beat, following the sun and keeping 
company with the hours, circles the earth with one contin- 
uous and unbroken strain of martial airs of England.'^ 
Fourteen years later came, in 1790, the first census of pop- 
ulation taken in the United States, and it was found that 
within the borders of the young nation there were not quite 
4,000,000 souls. At the expiration of ten years it appeared, 



STARTLING STORIES. 19 

upon taking the second census, that the population was a 
little more than 5,250,000, having increased between 1790 
and 1800 at the rate of 35 per cent. In a short time the 
tenth census of what has long been a mighty people will 
be taken, and we risk little in saying that, in Joseph Hume's 
phrase, "the tottle of the whole" will show a population 
of at least 50,000,000, especially if the immigrants who are 
now pouring into the United States in vast numbers are not 
omitted from the calculation. In other words, the popula- 
tion of the great Republic in 1880 will be their .population 
in 1T76 multiplied by twenty, and were it likely that the 
same ratio of increase could be maintained for another cen- 
tury, the mind of man would sink before the effort of 
imagining what it is possible for the monster Republic ta 
be in 1980. However boundless the resources of the North 
American continent may be, it can hardly be expected 
that the second century of the United States will be cele- 
brated by a thousand million human beings, and yet such 
would be the result of multiplying fifty millions by twenty. 
Anyhow it is certain that a century hence no such assem- 
blage of men speaking the same language and amenable to 
the same general traditions of feeling, habit and education, 
will ever have been gathered together upon earth as will 
then propably occupy the great "Western Continent. 



A Sho-wer of Lightning. 

A STRANGE ELECTRICAL PHENOMENON. 

A remarkable electrical phenomenon, says the London 
Times^ occurred recently at Clarens. Heavy masses of 
rain-cloud hid from view the mountains which separate Fri- 
bourg from Montreaux, but their summits were from time 
to time lit up with vivid flashes of lightning, and a heavy 
thunder-storm seemed to be raging in the valleys of the 



20 STAKTLING STORIES. 

Avants and the Allizal. JSTo rain was falling near the lake, 
and the storm still appeared far off, when a tremendous 
peal of thunder shook the houses of Clarens and Tavel to 
their foundations. At the same instant a magnificent 
cherry tree near the cemetery, measuring a meter in cir- 
cumierence, was struck by lightning. Some people who 
were working in a vineyard close by saw the electric fluid 
play about a little girl who had been gathering cherries, 
and was already thirty paces from the tree. She was lit- 
erally folded in a sheet of fire. The vine-dressers fled in 
terror from the spot. In the cemetery six persons sep- 
arated into three groups, none of them within two hundred 
and fifty paces of the cherry tree, were enveloped in a 
luminous cloud. The}' felt as if they were being struck in 
the face with hailstones or fine gravel, and when they 
touched each other sparks of electricity passed from their 
finger-ends. At the same time a column of fire was seen 
to descend in the direction of Ohatelard, and it is averred 
that the electric fluid could be distinctly heard as it ran 
from point to point of the iron railing of a vault in the 
cemetery. 

The strangest part of the story is, that neither the little 
girl, the people in the cemetery, nor the vine-dressers ap- 
pear to have been hurt ; the only inconvenience complained 
of being an unpleasant sensation in the joints, as if they 
had been violently twisted, a sensation which was felt with 
more or less acuteness for a few hours after. The explana- 
tion of this phenomenon is probably to be found in Prof 
Colladon's theory of the way in which lightning descends, 
as described in a letter on the effect of lightning on trees, 
printed in the London Times. The professor contends 
that it falls in a shower, not in a perpendicular flash, and 
that it runs along branches of trees until it is all gathered 
in the trunk, which it bursts or tears open in its effort to 



J 



SIAETLING STORIES. 21 

reach the ground. In the instance in question, the trunk 
of the cherry tree is as completely shivered as if it had 
been exploded by a charge of dynamite. A part of the 
shower which destroyed the tree fell where the little girl 
was standing, but, distributed over th^ grass, left her un- 
harmed, and was so disseminated in the cemetery that the 
six persons upon whom the electric rain descended escaped 
without serious injury. 



A Funeral Without a Corpse. 

"Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, with the part of Hamlet 
omitted by particular desire," would scarcely be a more 
remarkable performance than a burial from which the corpse 
had been "left out" by mistake. Such inattention to de- 
tail on the part of all concerned in the ceremony of sepul- 
ture, as is involved in the latter omission, appears almost 
incredible, l^evertheless, a strange story, published in the 
leading Italian newspapers, gives an example of this sin- 
gular anomaly. 

It is stated that a native of Bossito, Lombardy, lately 
suffered bereavement by the death of his wife, and his 
grief for the departed was so poignant that his relatives 
deemed it expedient to prevent him from being present at 
the final preparations for the funeral ceremony, and from 
assisting in person at its celebration. Keturning to his 
house late in the evening after the burial, and entering his 
bed-room, he found to his horror and consternation the life- 
less form of his wife, robed in its death cerements, rechning 
on the bier, and still awaiting interment. The widower 
rushed into the street, and lost no time in notifying what 
he had seen to the police authorities, who at first inclined 
to the opinion that sorrow had turned his brain. On ac- 
companying him home, however, they soon convinced 



22 STARTLING STOBIES. 

themselves that his extraordinarj statement was in every 
particular correct. Inquiries were forthwith instituted, and 
resulted in the amazing discovery that the village under- 
taker had "forgotten all about the corpse," and had nailed 
up an empty coffin, which had been subsequently conveyed 
and consigned to the grave with due religious ceremony 
and sorrowful observance. 



A Peruvian Experience. — What a Baby Letter Did. 

A San Francisco gentleman, who was some time since in 
South America, having occasion to go from Valparaiso to 
Tacna, Peru, on legitimate private business, was arrested 
upon suspicion of being a Chilian spy. Being anxious to 
penetrate into Bolivia, and unable to obtain a passport, he 
ran the Chilian blockade from Iquique, and arrived in Tacna 
with little baggage, carrying in his pockets some business 
and family correspondence and family photographs. One 
of these home letters contained the painted head of a paper 
doll, sent to him by his two-year-old boy, and a funny let- 
ter, scrawled in unmeaning hieroglyphics by the same baby 
hands. These mementoes were viewed with great suspi- 
cion by the officials, and deemed quite sufficient to justify 
his being shot. 

He was incarcerated in a dungeon, guarded by two senti- 
nals, and kept for the first three days without food. In the 
course of a few days every Chilian in the province was 
arrested, and as the families of the prisoners were allowed 
to visit them, the American managed to smuggle a letter to 
a prominent merchant of the place, a Mr. Camererj-, of the 
firm of Camerery & Koch, to whom he had brought letters 
of introduction. This gentleman finally succeeded, at the 
expiration of three weeks, in obtaining his release. His 



!5TAKTLi:s'a STOKIKS. 23 

confiscated possessions were returned to him, with the 
exception of the mementoes described, which will probably 
occupy important places in Peruvian annals, to the surprise 
of the little fellow who sent them. 

The prisoner was discharged by the authorities with con- 
siderable reluctance, a fact perhaps in part due to his man- 
ner of reception of their courtesies. Even the three days' 
starving did not tame him, for when they sounded him, at 
the end of that time, to see whether he was ready to come 
to terms, and yield the key to the mysterious cipher, he 
told them he would acknowledge he was hungry, and in- 
formed them that if they would roast their Prefect or Gen- 
eral Montero, he would gladly eat them, and the act might 
make him a civilized Peruano. 



"The Avenger of Mankind." 

A GENUINE TRAGEDY ON THE STAGE. 

A terrible scene took place in the Teatro del Circo : t 
Madrid. During the performance a madman forced his way 
into the house, armed with a hatchet, and contrived tocliuib 
from the auditorium upon the stage, where, brandishing his 
weapon furiously, he announced himself to the terrified 
audience as "the avenger of mankind." Upon one of the 
attendants approaching him with the object of persuading 
him to withdraw from the stage, he smote the unfortunate 
man to the earth with one deadly blow ; and he managed 
to keep the police off, when they attempted to arrest him, 
by whirling his hatchet round his head with such force and 
swiftness that none of the "agents of authority" dared to 
rush in upon him. Presently, however, a party of soldiers 
made their appearance in the theatre, under the command 
of an officer, who summoned the raging maniac to give up 



24 , STARTLING ST0KIE8. 

liis weapon and surrender himself, but in vain; whereupon 
the detachment received orders to fire at him with blank 
cartridge, in the hope of frightening him into submission. 
All this while he was yelling at the top of his voice, flour- 
ishing his hatchet, and threatening to kill anybody who 
should approach him. Recognizing the impossibility of 
overpowering him without risking the soldiers' lives, the 
officer in command gave the order to load with ball and fire 
upon him. A minute later the wretched man lay a corpse 
upon the stage, three bullets having passed through his 
head ; and this highly sensational dramatic episode having 
been thus brought to a close, the audience returned to their 
places, from which they had fled in terror when the mad- 
man made his first and last appearance upon the stage, 
and the evening's performances were resumed at the point 
at which they had been interrupted by "mankind's 
avenger." 



Superstition Among German Soldiers. 

Dr. Euss tells a story of an Hungarian officer who was 
severely, though by no means fatally, wounded on the field 
of Sadowa. He was fast bleeding to death, however, when 
the surgeon came to him, but might have been saved had 
he not obstinately refused all aid. The surgeon noticed 
that he held something very tightly in his hand, which he 
pressed convulsively to his breast. 

Presently he began to tremble very violently, and crying 
out, "It has done me no good !" threw away a piece of 
paper, and then expired. 

The paper was found to be a talisman, bearing some 
written characters which were quite unintelligible. The 
poor fellow trusted in its supernatural power until aid by 



STARTLD^G STORIES. 25 

natural means was out of the question, and then cast it 
away with a pang of despair. 

Many a similar agonizing discovery was made during the 
war of 1S70-71, too late for the learner to profit by the ex- 
perience. After the battle of Worth in particular, a great 
number of talismans, charms, and the like, were picked up 
close to the corpses of those who had clung to them until, 
in their last agony, they had lost faith in their healing 
virtue, and had flung them away. It must not be supposed, 
however, that the German soldier as a class is given to this 
kind of superstition. It was found on investigation that 
there was a close relation between education and the ex- 
istence of these beliefs. The provinces which were in the 
lowest state as regards education, gave the largest contin- 
gent of those who were thus credulous. Talismans, charms, 
letters of exemptions, etc., were found in the largest propor- 
tion among recruits from the Polish provinces, and in those 
provinces education is at the lowest point. — All the Year 
Bound. 



How the "White Man Gained Everything. 

The Kaffir cosmogony says that three nations were cre- 
ated — the Whites, the Amacosa and the Amalouw. They 
assembled before Teco, the Creator, to receive his bounty. 
A honey-bird drew off the Hottentots in full cry. Teco, in 
wrath, condemned them to exist on wild roots and honey- 
bees, and possess no stock whatever. The Kaffirs eagerly 
claimed this one and that one from out of the herds of 
cattle. Teco, indignant at their greediness, said they should 
have no better gifts. The Whites, patiently waited till 
they had received land, cattle and all other property. Such 
is the narrative of the Cape. 



26 



STARTLING STORIES. 

How to Spell Isaac. 



Mr. Isaac Staples, of Stillwater, Minn., is a lumber 
dealer who has had an extensive correspondence. His 
bookkeeper has made a memorandum of the fact every 
time the given name of Mr. Staples has been misspelled in 
a letter addressed to him. The correspondence has already 
yielded the following fifty erroneous spellings, which will 
be read with delight by the spelling reformers : 



Isiac, 


Isic, 


Iceic, 


Isick, 


Icaac, 


lisac. 


Isiaac, 


Isaas, 


Issacc, 


Icaace, 


Icaack, 


Isaacce, 


Isica, 


Isaace, 


I Sick, 


Iseac, 


Icaas, 


laac, 


Iseke, 


Isich, 


Isac, 


Icks, 


lassac, 


Issick, 


Jsaac, 


Isaag, 


laasic. 


Izk, 


Isaak, 


Issac, 


Izic, 


Aisec, 


I Sic, 


lisace. 


Isace, 


Isiace, 


Isaar, 


Issach, 


Isic, 


Isoac, 


Icac, 


laasac, 


Isaack, 


Isak, 


Isice, 


Isach, 


Isaach, 


Isac, 


Isaack, 


Isaic. 



Extemporizing in the Pulpit. 

AMtrsmG INCIDENTS WHERE GREAT PREAOHEES FAILED. 

They make a great mistake wh6 suppose that extempore 
preaching has been the law with all great preachers ; in 
fact, we may almost go so far as to say the reverse has been 
the case. Extemporizing will often be exposed to difficul- 
ties which only a very honest mind can overcome and make 
the best of. When Father Taylor, the American preacher, 
once lost himself and became bewildered in the course of 
his sermon, he extricated himself by the exclamation : "I 
have lost the tr;ick of the nominative case, my brethren, 
but one thing I know, I am bound for the kingdom 1 ' ' and 



SIAKTLINO- STORIES. 27 

the frankness of such a confession would be sure to save 
him from suffering in the esteem of his audience. But the 
more stately and dignified masters, it is very obvious, can 
not deliver themselves in that way. 

The most singular instance of this kind in our memory 
js the case of a very distinguished man to whom we loved 
to listen in our boyhood, a preacher with a wonderful com- 
mand over every faculty that could give brilliancy or beauty 
to pulpit exercises. He always preached without notes, 
and always broke his discourses into divisions ; but once, 
to our amazement and that of the congregation, having 
traveled through, so far as we remember, two departments 
of the discourse, he caught himself up and said, "I — I 
forget the third division!" He turned around to the orp^an- 
ist. "Organist, strike up a verse." He gave out a line 
of a hymn, and while the organ was playing and the peo- 
ple singing, he leaned in deep thought over the pulpit ; the 
singing over, he announced the missing link. "But," said 
he, "is not that singular?" and he proceeded to show how 
it was that he had lost it, and how he found it — proceeded, 
in a really enchanting way, to talk upon the law of associa- 
tion of ideas and the mysterj^ and marvels of retentiveness 
and memory as proof of the immateriality and immortality 
of the soul, until the time was gone, and we really had no 
more of the sermon after all. 

A similar anecdote has often been told of the late Thomas 
Binney. Dr. Harris, the author of "Mammon," had 
begged his services for some anniversary, and Binney de- 
clared his utter inability to prepare a sermon — in those 
days he was a strictly extempore speaker. It was urged, 
" Oh, come and preach such and such a sermon ; that is 
ready to your mind!" And so Mr. Binney promised that 
he would take the service; but he also, having got through 
two heads of the discourse, became bewildered. "Thirdly 



as STABTLING STORIES. 

— thirdly — ^I've forgotten what was thirdly !" he said ; and 
he looked oyer the pulpit to where Dr. Harris was sitting. 
"Brother Harris, what was thirdly ?" Harris looked up 
and said: "So and so." "Exactly," said the discomfited 
preacher, who pursued his way with ease and happiness to 
the close. 



A Couple of Eggs which Sold for a Thousand Dollars. 

If the sale of curiosities, says the London Telegraph, 
which took place in London recently be any criterion, the 
great auk has been very badly advised in ceasing its peri- 
odical visits to the North of Scotland. As a foreign trav- 
eler that gentle bird was at one time somewhat of a cel- 
ebrity. When tired of diving for lump-fish in the northern 
seas, or possibly precluded from doing so by the phenom- 
enon known as ice, he would make a trip to such southern 
latitudes as Greenland, Norway, Spitzbergen, and the ex- 
treme north of Great Britain, occasionally accompanied by 
his spouse, who, by way of a souvenir, would lay an egg 
in some cleft above high water. Two such memorials of 
visits have, indeed, just passed under the auctioneer's ham- 
mer, one selling for £100, while the other actually fetched 
102 guineas, the fortunate buyer being Lord Lilford. Why, 
with these facts before him, the great auk stays away, it 
might, indeed, be hard to understand. A bird that can 
lay such golden eggs as these, should lose no time in swim- 
ming — for it cannot fly — to the best markets. One diffi- 
culty only presents itself in the matter, and that certainly 
is formidable. The great auk has, it is feared, suddenly 
become extinct. If that be so, its eggs are certainly worth 
all that they have fetched, as no more will be found in 
Scotland or elsewhere. 



STARTLING 8T0EIES. 'J9 

Strange Verification of a Dream. 

Mrs. Elizabeth Mainwaring lives at Sandusky, O. Her 
husband who is a large manufacturer and dealer in tin and 
japanned ware, not long since started on a collecting tour 
among his country customers, accompanied by his son 
Enoch, a young man of twenty, in deh'cate health. They 
were in a spring-wagon, as most of their custom lay among 
the small towns and villages off the line of the railroads. 

On the third night after their departure, Mrs. Mainwar- 
ing awoke her eldest daughter, who was sleeping wilh her, 
as well as her mother, Mrs. Dougherty, who occupied an 
adjoining room, and told them of a terrible dream she had 
just had, and which she feared was a mysterious reflection 
on her mind of an actual occurrence. At the same time 
she directed their attention to the fact that she had 
awakened out of her dream at precisely five minutes past 
eleven, when the clock over the mantel-piece had suddenly 
stopped at that point. She dreamed that she saw her hus- 
band and son driving over a wild and wood-bordered road 
in the night, and she somehow received the impression that 
it was in the neighborhood of Toledo, O. She could hear 
them talking of a large sum of money they had with them, 
as the result of successful collections, and at the same time 
she could see ahead four men lurking at the roadside for 
the purpose of waylaying them The dreamer tried to 
warn the dear ones of their danger, but was restrained by 
the strange inability to move or speak — that is a charac- 
teristic of the nightmare. She could only look and see, 
and that with terrible distinctness. And she presently saw 
them halted and attacked by the four villains. Many shots 
were exchanged, and she saw her son fall in the bed of the 
wagon at the first fire; but her husband, who was a very 
powerful and fearless man, made such a stout resistance 
with his revolver that one of his assailants was killed, and 



30 STAETLLNG STORIES. 

the others fled into the woods, two of them badly wounded. 
She then saw her husband whip his horses into a gallop 
until he reached the open, moonlit prairie, where he made 
a halt, raised the body of his son in his arms, and, after 
feelint^ of the lieart, he exclaimed in a voice of bitter dis- 
tress: "My God ! he is dead. What will his poi r mother 
say?" 

Then she awoke. Mrs. Mainwaring was so excited over 
her dream that she could not sleep any more during the 
night, though her mother and daughter laughed at her 
fears, and did their utmost to reassure her. 

On the following morning she received a telegram from 
her husband, at Toledo, conveying the sad intelligence 
that Enoch had been killed in an attack that was made 
upon the pair by robber-tramps on the previous night, four 
miles out of Toledo. Mr. Mainwaring returned home on 
the evening of the same day, with the body of his son, 
and his subsequent detailed account of the fatal encounter 
verified his wife's dream in every particular. More than 
this, his watch had received such injury during the struggle 
that the main-spring had broken and the works came to a 
stop at precisely five minutes past eleven, the exact moment 
that the clock had stopped over the mantel-piece. 



One Man Killed Four Panthers in Two Hours. 

Mr. Haugh, says an Oregon paper, who lives near Scott's 
mills, started for Beaver lake to get some cedar tim])er. He 
had along a large-bored rifle, a little rat-terrier and a rather 
large dog of part Newfoundland breed. After leaving the 
main road and getting to an almost blind road, he saw a 
panther cross the road ahead of him. He stopped the 
team, tied them to a small tree and followed the dogs, who 



J 



STARTLING SToKIES. 31 

had succeeded in treeing the panther in a very short time. 
It was on a large oak tree, about thirty feet from the 
ground, and growling savagely. Mr. Haugh fell back a 
short distance in order to get a rest shot, fired, and the 
beast fell dead to the ground, having made a spring which 
brought him about fifteen or twenty feet from the tree. On 
going back to the wagon the children poiiited out another 
panther, back on the road over which they had passed. 
On approaching it to get a shot it darted into the brush, 
followed by the dogs, who succeeded in treeing that one 
without any difficulty. On following the dogs, Mr. Haugh 
found it on the large limb of a fir tree, about twenty-five 
or thirty feet from the ground. Getting a rest on the side 
of a tree some distance away, he shot this one. At the 
crack of the gun the panther jumped from the tree and 
was followed by the dogs. On following them it was found 
dead, about one hundred yards from where it was shot. 
On approaching the ranch where Mr. S. fluelet once em- 
barked in the cattle business, he found that the little dog 
had succeeded in treeing a panther about two- thirds grown. 
This one was shot dead. Before Mr. Haugh had time to 
load he heard the big dog barking at something about two 
hundred yards off down the hillside. On going to where 
it was, he saw the biggest panther he ever saw — a very 
large female. She was growling and snapping her teeth at 
the dogs so much that she formed the most savage picture 
he had ever seen. It was difficult to get a good shot, but 
on firing she came down and the limb on which she was 
with her. As she ran off the dogs followed her, and on 
coming up with them he saw her on a stump, about twenty- 
five feet from the ground. Mr. Haugh shot again, but, as 
no vital spot was struck, it only succeeded in making her 
grovJ and lash her tail fiercer than ever. On looking for 
a bullet Mr. Haugh found that he had only half a bullet 



32 STARTLING STORIES. 

left, with which he had to make a successful snot or lose 
his game. His patching was all gone as well, so, tearing 
off part of the lining of his coat, he put it round the bullet 
and rammed it home. Taking a careful aim he fired. This 
time he saw the huge beast tumble to the ground to be 
seized bj the dogs. She seized the big dog by the scalp 
with one paw, and had succeeded in tearing the scalp near- 
ly off" when death put an end to her struggle. The last 
one, on being measured, was over nine feet long from tip 
to tip. All the panthers were full-grown, except one, 
which was only about two-thirds grown. They were all 
killed within two hours. 



Some Curious Statistics. 

The Boston Transcript says : Allowing two square feet 
to each person, the entire population of Boston could stand 
on the Public Garden, with a good deal of room to spare. 
The entire population of the United States could stand in 
Boston proper (not including Brighton, Dorchester and 
West Eoxbury.) The entire population of the world (now 
estimated at (1,440,000,000) could stand on the Island of 
Martha's Vineyard, or in the space occupied by the towns 
of Boston, Brookline, Newton, Needham, Dedham, Hyde 
Park and Milton. The State of Massachusetts could in 
this way accommodate seventy times the present popula- 
tion of the world. The entire population of the world, 
placed side by side, and allowing two feet to each person, 
would encircle the earth twenty times. The States of 
Maine, New Hampshire and Yermont, taken together, are 
as large as England. Any one of the States of Georgia, 
Blinois, Iowa and North Carolina are as large as England. 
Kansas is as large as England and Scotland together. Ire- 
land is about the size of Maine. France is more than 



STARTLING ST0EIE8. 33 

twice as large as England, Wales and Scotland together. 
Texas is tliirtj-five times as large as Massachusetts, or as 
large as Maine, New Hampshire, Yermont, Massachusetts, 
Ehode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Penn- 
sjlvania, Delaware, Maryland, Ohio and Indiana combined. 
The entire population of the United States could be pro- 
vided for in the State of Texas, allowing each man, woman 
and child four acres of land. The entire population of the 
world could be provided for in the United States, allowing 
each person one and a half acres of land. 



A Dream Realized. 



A.bout fifteen German miles from Posen there is a town 
named Eeichberg, situated on the Kiver Warte, in which 
there is a considerable Jewish population, and among these 
a family of the name of Isaac is one of the most opulent. 
The foundation of their wealth was owing to the following 
circumstance, which is authenticated, and a matter of pub- 
lic notoriety there. 

The head of the family was, many years ago, in a state 
bordering on absolute poverty, and dreamed several nights 
consecutively that if he made a journey to Hamburg, he 
should there learn something of great consequence. This 
made such an impression on his imagination that he could 
not drive it out of his mind. He realized some funds and 
proceeded to Hamburg, where he took up his residence in 
the house of the reader of the Synagogue, who was in the 
habit of letting lodgings. After a stay of some weeks, the 
reader, seeing that tis guest had no occupation, and did 
not seem to have any definite object in view, while his ap- 
pearance and demeanor indicated that his means could be 
but scanty, inquired what was his object at Hamburg, when 



34 STARTLING STORIES. 

Isaac related to him the circurastauces of his dream. The 
reader naturally turned it into ridicule, and added that no 
sensible man would pay any attention to dreams, much less 
undertake a long journey on such a wild-goose chase from 
such a motive. 

" If I paid attention to dreams," said the reader, "I 
should have long since made a journey to Eeichberg-am- 
Warte, for I have dreamed that in a house there, there is 
buried in the kitchen a dough-trough containing a large 
sum of money." 

He then proceeded to describe minutely the situation and 
appearance of the house and kitchen, and even the furni- 
ture in the place. The astonishment of Isaac was great at 
finding it to entirely correspond in every respect with his 
own residence. He said nothing, but seeming to take the 
rebuke, he immediately returned home, and on digging in 
the spot indicated by the reader, he found a trough con- 
taining a comparatively large sum of money. Every Fri- 
day, to the present day, the Sabbath bread for the family 
is kneaded in that trough, which is kept as a precious me- 
mento. 



Naming Children in China. 

In China the names of children are given according to 
circumstances associated with the time of their birth. If 
a child is born at midnight its name may be Midnight; if 
the season be rainy, the child's name may be Rain ; if birth 
occurs on the birthday of some relative, that relative's age 
may be the name of the new-born, and so there are names 
of Thirty, Five, Fifty, One and other numbers. But there 
are even more curious names. If the parents desired a 
boy and a girl is born, her name may be Ought-to-be-a-boy. 



i 



SIAKTLING STORIES. 35 

Never Whistle in a Coal Shaft. 

A CCKIOUS MINING SUPERSTITION. 

A gentleman in Carbondale, Pa., sajs: "Miners, es- 
pecially those who have come from foreign countries, and 
represent a past generation of their class, are given to 
many superstitious fears. The younger miners — those born 
in this country, and who have grown up under the influence 
of its enlightening institutions — do not, as a general thing, 
share in this superstitious belief, although some of them 
place as much importance on 'signs' and 'omens' of good 
and evil, as do their more ignorant ancestors. Among 
the superstitions cherished by' miners, is that of whistling 
in a mine. To whistle in a mine is considered an evil omen. 
Miners never whistle while at work. Sometimes they sing 
while toiling in the dark, damp, narrow chamber of the 
mines, hundreds of feet below the surface, but never loudly, 
and only plaintive folk songs and ballads that have been 
crooned over the cradles of generations of their class. It 
is a singular fact that, despite the peril that constantly be- 
sets him in the mine, the coal-miner is always cheerful 
amid it all. Let one who may visit a mine but whistle 
among the workmen, and the cheerfulness he has noticed 
as characterizing them will be gone at once. Most all old 
miners believe that a 'good luck spirit ' lurks in every mine, 
and that at a sound of whistling it flies and leaves the 
miners at the mercy of the spirit of evil. If ill befalls any 
of the workmen that daj; the believers in the superstition 
ascribe its cause entirely to the frightening away of the 
good luck spirit by the fatal whistle. 

"In 1840 there was a great mine disaster at this place. 
Several miners were buried in one of the Delaware and 
Hudson Canal Company's mines by a sudden caving-in of 
the roof. Although the cause of the caving was known to 
have been a lack of proper support by pillars and timbers, 



36 STAKTLINQ- STORIES. 

at least one old miner, a survivor of the disaster, still living 
here, has always maintained, and still maintains that it was 
caused by a 'dare-devil miner,' named Jack Richards, 
whistling in the mine while working with his gang, against 
the protests of his comrades. Richards was a skeptical 
young Welshman, who ridiculed all the superstitions of 
his fellow- workmen. With the old miner mentioned above 
and fifteen others, he was working in the mine, a mile 
from the entrance, on the day of the catastrophe. The 
mine . was well-known to be scantily propped, and the 
miners were ' robbing ' it preparatory to its abandonment. 
He is described as having been a merry fellow, fond of 
teasing his companions. On this occasion he suddenly laid 
down his pick and announced to his fellow-workmen that he 
intended to 'whistle them up the "Rigs o' Barley."' 
The miners were aghast at the thought of Richards thus 
flying in the face of mine luck, and they begged of him not 
to chase the good-luck spirit away. He laughed at their 
fears, and with clear loud notes made the chamber ring 
with the lively Scotch air. Not content with that, says the 
•old miner, shuddering at this day over the sacrilegious 
temerity of the merry Welshman, he rattled off a jig known 
by the miners as 'The Devil Among the Tailors," and 
ended by telling the good-luck spirit to ' take a dance to 
that, and be blowed to it.' None of the miners could 
speak for some time. Some of them tried to work again, 
but the fear of disaster was so strong upon them that they 
all made preparations to quit the mine. The old miner 
who recalls this incident, says he had a brother and a son 
working in another part of the mine, and he made np his 
mind to go to them, tell them of Jack Richards' foolhardi- 
ness, warn them of its consequences and escape from the 
mine. Jack Richards could not convince any of them of 
the childishness of their intended course. 



STARTLING STORIES. 3T 

" Suddenly, while they were gathering up their tools, a 
noise like the sound of distant thunder came to the ears of 
the agitated miners. They knew too well what the sound 
presaged. The roof was 'working,' and a cave-in threat- 
ened. The miners turned to Jack and charged him with 
bringing disaster upon them by his defiance of the good- 
hick spirit of the mine. Jack replied that if the roof was 
falling it was because of insufficient support, and not 
because of his whistling, and knowing the danger that 
encompassed them all, he counseled his comrades to lose 
no time in 'getting atop.' But before they could take the 
first step toward reaching the surface, a second shock ran 
through thj mine. This time it was like a clap of thunder 
near the earth. It was followed by a crash that could be 
made only by the falling masses of rock and coal from the 
roof, and by a gust of wind that hurled the miners against 
the jagged walls of their chamber. Then the mine fell in 
all about them, and the seventeen miners and the car horse 
were imprisoned behind a wall of fallen coal, in a space not 
more than forty feet square. Their lights were extinguished, 
and there was not a match in the party. 

""With death waiting them in one of its worst forms, they 
cursed Jack Richards, and one of the miners tried to find 
him in the dark to brain him with a pick. To ascertain 
whether any of the gang had been killed by the falling 
coal, the name of each one was called by one of the miners. 
All responded but Jack Richards. He was found dead, 
half-buried beneath the wall of rock and coal. 

" The men worked for hours, many of them working the 
flesh from their fingers in the sharp coal. Some of them 
lost all heart, and threw themselves upon the damp floor 
of their underground prison, and bewailed their fate. Sud- 
denly a ray of light broke through a small opening in 
the wall. Then a lantern was pushed through, followed 



38 STARTLING STORIES. 

bj a man's Lead. The man cried out: 'Is there a man 
here that is alive?' A glad shout from the miners was the 
reply. The man pulled himself through the opening into 
the chamber. It was Alexander Boyden, the superintend 
ent. He took the dead body of Jack Richards on his back 
and led the way, and two hours afterward the miners were 
in the arms of wives, parents and sweethearts on top. 
Richards had no relatives but a crippled sister, who was 
dying with consumption. She died the next day. The 
brother and son of the narrator of this tragic incident and 
twelve other miners were never found. Three days after 
the fall, Mine Boss Hosie, who had been in a distant part 
of the mine when the roof caved in, emerged from its 
depths, worn to a skeleton. With his pick he had dug his 
way for more than a mile through an almost solid wall, 
without a taste of food or a drop of water to sustain him. 
This mine tragedy forms one of the favorite narratives of 
the old miners of this region, and after relating it to in- 
quiring visitors they never fail to warn them not to whis- 
tle if they intend going down in a mine." 



Lofty Towers. 

The crown of William Penn's hat which is to adorn his 
thirty-six-foot statue surmounting the lofty tower of the new 
Philadelphia public buildings will bo just 535 feet from the 
pavement. This is higher than any other tower yet con- 
structed. Trinity steeple in New York city, which seems 
so imposing with its height of 284 feet, shrinks into insig- 
nificance in comparison with the lofty spire which is in- 
tended to be the crowning glory of Penu square. The 
highest towers which have yet been constructed are those 
of the Cologne Cathedral, which have at present a height 



STAETLING STOEIES. 39 

of 524 feet 11 inches, or 10 feet 1 inch below Mr. Penn's 
proposed hat. As, however, the Cologne towers are still 
unfinished, and aim at an ultimate altitude of 576 feet 9 
inches, the Penn Square towers may never enjoy the dis- 
tinction of being the highest in the world. 

The following are the heights of some of the chief lofty 
buildings : Tower of St. Nicholas at Hamburg, 473 feet 1 
inch; cupola of St. Peter's, Rome, 469 feet 2 inches; 
cathedral spire at Strasburg, 465 feet 11 inches; pyramid 
of Cheops, 449 feet 5 inches; tower of St. Stephen's, Vi- 
enna, 443 feet 10 inches; tower of St. Martin's, Landshut, 
434 feet 8 inches ; cathedral spire at Frieburg, 410 feet 1 
inch; Cathedral of Antwerp, 404 feet 10 inches; Cathe- 
dral of Florence, 390 feet 5 inches; St. Paul's, London, 
365 feet 1 inch ; ridge tiles of Cologne Cathedral, 360 feet 
3 inches; cathedral tower at Magdeburg, 339 feet 11 inches; 
tower of the new Yotive Church at Yienna, 314 feet 11 
inches; tower of the Rathhaus at Berlin, 288 feet 8 inches; 
and the towers of Notre Dame at Paris, 232 feet 11 inches. 



A Walk Half -Way to the Moon. 

In these days of great pedestrian feats it is worth while 
to record the doings of an old Torkshireman who has just 
died at the ripe age of 84 years, at Masham, in Yorkshire. 
James Heap was a schoolmaster, and carried on his calling 
in a wild and bleak part of the country, walking every day 
a distance of eight miles. He lived at a cotton-mill just 
below the village of Healey, which is in the western part 
of that portion of Yorkshire called Mashamshire. His 
school-house was four miles distant, at Coltersdale, which 
is still further west, and among the bleak moors and wild 
hills leading away to "Westmoreland. 

A storm of wind and rain is no trifling matter in these 



40 STARTLING STORIES. 

parts, and during a snow-storm the snow very often drifts 
so thickly as to make the roads almost impassable ; but no 
condition of the weather or the atmosphere could shake 
James Heap's steadfast purpose, and he never had any ail- 
ment or accident which kept him from going his daily 
round to the school and home again. Many a time had he 
to wade through snow-drifts to find that his pupils were 
not able to reach the school, and he was constantly sub- 
jected to a drenching rain in the winter months. Yet from 
December, 1822, to January 1867, he never missed a sin- 
gle day, and during 2,292 consecutive weeks he walked 
more than 110,000 miles, or nearly five times around the 
world. 

Nor was he altogether idle on Sundays, for during forty- 
two years of this period he shared with others the teaching 
of a Sunday-school at a place called Summerside, about the 
same distance from his home, and in an equally dreary and 
wild district on the moors with Coltersdale; seventeen 
Sundays in each year, during these forty-two years, did he 
walk eight miles to teach, which adds an aggregate of 
5,712 miles to the former sum, so that, taking Sundays and 
week days into the reckoning, he would, if he had contin- 
ued his work for rather more than another year, have cov- 
ared a distance equal to half the space between the earth 
and the moon. 



Col. Synge's Dream. 



A friend told me the other day that he met Col. Syngo 
at a club here, and that the latter remarked, in a joking 
way, that he was "sure the brigands would 'nab' him some 
day." Some time later the Colonel called on a lawyer 
here and expressed his intention of making his last will and 



STARTLING STORIES. 41 

testament, adding that perhaps the lawyer would think it a 
trifle foolish in him, a man still in his prime and in the 
flush of health, to be concerned about such a matter. 
Naturally the gentleman of the bar professionally thought, 
on the contrary, no such thing ; on the contrary, it was al- 
ways well to be prepared, etc., etc. "Well," said the 
Colonel, "I will tell my reason, and I don't know that it 
will strike you as a good one. Last night I had a most 
vivid and distinct dream, in which my farm was attacked 
and I carried off by a mob. The impression on me was so 
strong that I have come here to get my affairs in order.'* 
The will was made, signed and completed, and Col. Synge 
left for Salonica. Only a few months later the attack took 
place with which the whole world has been ringing. 

This is rather a strong point in favor of the dream en 
thusiasts. 

Strange Story of the Plague in Memphis. 

A reliable gentleman says that in 1877, when the first 
yellow fever appeared in the city of Memphis, he was 
there on business. He had been there for several weeks, 
and then first experienced a drowsy sensation. This was 
followed in a week or ten days by the fever in all its fury, 
which rendered him unconscious. He lay for some time in 
this condition, his life being in a precarious state. After a 
time he seemed to be overcome by the disease, and gradually 
grew weaker, until at last all pulsation had stopped, and 
breathing was no longer apparent. At that time it was the 
Custom to hurry the corpse to the graveyard without cere- 
mony. He was placed in a rude box and hurried away to 
the cemetery, followed by a single friend. On the way to 
the grave, however, this friend felt a conviction that he 
was not dead, and ordered the little procession to stop. 
The box was taken back to the place of starting, and his 



i2 STARTLING STORIES. 

body ag.ain placed on a cot. After a few hours of patient 
watching, a shght movement of the face and upper portions 
of the body was observed. An examination was made of 
the pulse, which was found to be faintly beating, while 
respiration was apparent. In a few hours more the gentle- 
man was aroused, and in less than thirty-six hours he was 
sitting up. He recovered rapidly, and in the course of a 
few hours he was able to get up and move around. Mean- 
while the Associated Press dispatches had contained an 
account of his death from the fever, and his family in New 
York city, and one son, working on the Bee Line road, had 
mourned for him as one gone from the face of the earth. 

After his recovery he went to Texas, and from there he 
crossed over into New Mexico. He was gone on his trip 
about two months, during which time he wrote to his rela- 
tives, announcing his restoration to health. lie soon after 
came north, as the quarantine against Southern traffic and 
travel was raised, and eventually landed in Indianapolis, 
where he met his son, who was as much rejoiced at the 
meeting as if his father had been raised from tho dead. It 
was learned that his letters had miscarried, and he wrote 
at once to New Tork, again announcing his recovery. 



The Bottom of the Sea. 

' ' The form of the depressed area which lodges the water 
of the deep ocean," says Dr. Carpenter, the English phys- 
icist, ' ' is rather to be likened to that of a flat waiter or tea 
tray, surrounded by an elevated and steeply-sloping rim, 
than to that of the 'basin' with which it is commonly 
compared;" and he adds: "The great continental plat- 
forms usually rise very abruptly from the margins of the 
real oceanic depressoi areas. 



STAETLI^fG STORIES. 43 

" The average depth of the ocean floors is now ascertained 
to be about 13,000 feet. As the average height of the en- 
tire land mass of the globe above sea level is about 1,000 
feet, and the sea area about two and three-fourths times 
that of the land, it follows that the total volume of ocean 
water is thirty-six times that of the land above the sea level. 
These deductions, seemingly unimportant except to the 
votary of science, are destined, perhaps, to serve the high- 
est practical purposes of deep-sea telegraphy. The intel- 
ligence now carried out of the enormous collection of later 
ocean researches shows the modern engineer and capitalist 
the feasibility of depositing a telegraphic cable over almost 
any part of the ocean's floor. 

"Not less interesting is a deduction Dr. Carpenter makes 
from the deep sea temperature observations in the North 
Atlantic. In consequence of the evaporation produced by 
the long exposure of the equatorial Atlantic currents, its 
waters contain such an excess of salt as, in spite of its high 
temperature, to be specifically heavier than the colder 
underflows which reach the equator from the opposite 
Arctic and Antarctic basins ; and, consequently, it substi- 
tutes itself by gravitation for the colder water to a depth of 
several hundred fathoms. Thus it conveys the solar heat 
downward in such a manner as to make the North Atlantic 
between the parallels of 20° and 40° a great reservoir of 
warmth. The climatic effect of this vertical transfer of 
equatorial heat is obvious. If the great heat-bearing cur- 
rents which enter the North Atlantic traversed its bosom 
as surface currents, they would expend their warmth largely 
in the high latitudes. But, as their heavy and highly-heated 
volumes in large measure descend to the deeper strata south 
of the fortieth parallel, their stores of tropical temperature 
are permanently arrested off our eastern coast, and ulti- 
mately made subservient to our climate. ' ' 



44 STARTLING STOEIES. 

Mark Twain's Visit to Niagara. 

HIS STARTLING DISCLOSURES — HE IS PITCHED OVER THE CAT- 
ARACT BY THE INDIANS. 

Niagara Fulls is one of the finest structures in the known 
world. I have been visiting this favorite watering-place 
recently, for the first time, and was well pleased. A gentle- 
man who was with uie said it was customary to be disap- 
pointed in the Falls, but that subsequent visits were sure to 
set that all right. He said that the first time he went, the 
hack fares were so much higher than the falls, that the falls 
appeared insignificant. But that is all regulated now. The 
hackmen have been tamed, numbered, placarded and black- 
guarded, and brought into subjection to the law, and dosed 
with moral principle till they are as meek as missionaries. 
There are no more outrages and extortions. That sort of 
thing cured itself It made the falls unpopular by getting 
into the newspapers ; and, whenever a pubhc evil achieves 
that sort of success for itself, its days are nuinbered. It 
became apparent that either the falls had to be discontinued, 
or the hackmen had to subside. They could not dam the 
falls, and so they did the hackmen. One can be comfort- 
able and happy there now. 

I drank up most of the American Fall before I learned 
that the waters were not considered medical. Why are 
people left in ignorance that way ? I might have gone on 
and ruined a fine property, merely for the want of a little 
trifling information. And yet the sources of information at 
Niagara Falls are not meagre. You are sometimes in doubt 
there about what you ought to do, but you are seldom in 
doubt about what you must not do. No, the signs keep 
you posted. If an infant can read, that infant is measur- 
ably safe at Niagara Falls. In your room at the hotel you 
will find your course marked out for you in the most con- 



STARTLING STORIES. 45 

venient way, by means of placards on the wall like these : 

"Pull the bell-rope gently, but don't jerk." 

" Bolt your door." 

" Don't scrape matches on the wall." 

"Turn off your gas when you retire." 

"Tie up your dog." 

" If you place your boots outside the door they Will be 
blackened, but the house will not be responsible for their 
return." (This is a confusing and tanglesome proposition, 
because it moves you to deliberate long and painfully as to 
whether it will really be any object to you to have your 
boots blackened unless they are returned.) 

"Give your key to the omnibus driver, if you forget and 
carry it off with you." 

Outside the hotel wherever you wander you are intelli- 
gently assisted by the signs. You cannot come to grief as 
long as you are in your right mind. But the difficulty is to 
stay in your right mind with so much iustruction to keep 
track of. For instance : 

" Keep off the grass." 

" Don't climb the trees." 

" Hands off the vegetables." 

" Do not hitch your horse to the shrubbery." 

" Yisit the Cave of the Winds." 

"Have your portrait taken in your carriage." 

" Forty per cent, in gold levied on all peanuts or other 
Indian curiosities purchased in Canada." 

"Photographs of the falls taken here." 

" Visitors will please notify the superintendent of any 
neglect on the part of employes to charge for commodities 
or services." 

" Don't throw stones down ; they may hit people below." 

"Tl;e proprietors will not be responsible for parties who 
jump over the falls." 



46 STARTLING STORIES. 

To tell the plain truth, the multitude of signs annoyed 
me. It was because I noticed at last that they always hap- 
pened to prohibit exactly the very thing I was just wanting 
to do. I desired to roll on the grass ; the sign prohibited 
it. I wished to climb a tree; the sign prohibited it. I 
longed to smoke ; the sign prohibited it. And I was just 
in the act of throwing a stone over to astonish and pulver- 
ize such parties as might be picnicking below, when a sign 
I have just mentioned forbade that. Even that satisfaction 
was denied me (and I a friendless orphan). There was no 
resource now but to seek consolation in the flowing bowl. 
I drew my flask from my pocket, but it was all in vain. A 
sign confronted me, which said : 

"No drinking allowed on these premises." 

On that spot I might have perished of thirst but for the 
saving words of an honored maxim that flitted through my 
memory at that critical moment, " All signs fail in dry 
time." Common law takes precedence of the statutes. I 
was saved. 

The noble Red Man has always been a darling of mine. 
I love to read about him in tales, legends and romances ; I 
love to read of his inspired sagacity ; and his love of the 

and his grand trutli- 
his general nobility 
of character; and his stately metaphorical manner of 
speech ; and his chivalrous love for his dusky maiden ; and 
the picturesque pomp of his dress and accoutrement — es- 
pecially the picturesque pomp of his dress and accoutre- 
ment. When I found the shops at Niagara Falls full of 
dainty Indian bead work and stunning moccasins, and 
equally stunning toy figures representing human beings 
who carried their weapons in holes bored through their 
arms and bodies, and had feet shaped like a pie, I was Allied 
with emotion. I knew that now, at last, I was going to 



STAETLING STORIES. 4T 

come face to face with the noble red man. A la y clerk 
in the shop told me, indeed, that all her grand array was 
made by. the Indians, and that they were plenty about the 
Falls, and that they were friendly, and it would not be 
dangerous to speak to them. And sure enough, as I ap- 
proached the bridge leading over to Luna Island I came 
upon a noble old son of the forest sitting under a tree, dili- 
gently at work upon a bead reticule. He wore a slouch 
hat and brogans and had a short black pipe in his mouth. 
Thus does the baleful contact with our effeminate civiliza- 
tion dilute the picturesque pomp which is so natural to the 
Indian when far removed from us in his native haunts, 
addressed the relic as follows : 

"Is the Wawho- Wang- Wang of the Whack-a- Whack 
happy ? Does the great Speckled Thunder sigh for the 
war-path, or is his heart contented with dreaming of his 
dusky maiden, the Pride of the Forest ? Does the mighty 
sachem yearn to drink the blood of his enemies, or is he 
satisfied to make bead reticules for the papooses of the pale- 
face ? Speak, sublime relic of bygone grandeur — venerable 
ruin, speak!" 

The relic said : 

"An' is it meself, Dinnis Hooligan, that ye'd be takin' 
for a bloody Injin, ye drawlin', lantern-jawed, spider-legged 
ruffin? By the piper that played before Moses, I'll eat ye!" 

I went away. 

I made one more attempt to fraternize with them, and 
only one. I came upon a camp of them gathered in the 
shade of a great tree, making wampum and moccasins, and 
addressed them in the language of friendship : 

"Noble Red Men, Braves, Grand Sachems, War Chiefs, 
Squaws, and High-you-Muck-a-Mucks, the Paleface from 
the setting sun greets you ! You, Beneficent Polecat — you, 
Devourer of Mountains — you. Roaring Thundergust — you, 



48 STARTLING STORIES. 

Bullj Boy with a Glass Eje — the Paleface from beyond 
the great waters greets you all ! War and pestilence have 
thinned your ranks and destroyed your once-proud nation. 
Poker, and seven-up, and a vain modern expense for soap, 
unknown to your glorious ancestors, have depleted your 
purses. Appropriating, in your simplicity, the property 
of others, has gotten you into trouble. Misrepresenting 
facts, in your sinless innocence, has damaged your reputa- 
tion with the soulless. Trading for forty-rod whisky, to 
enable you to get drunk and happy and tomahawk your 
families, has played the everlasting mischief with the pic- 
turesque pomp of your dress, and here you are, in the 
broad light of the nineteenth century, gotten up like the 
rag-tag-and-bobtail of the purlieus of New York ! For 
shame ! Remember your ancestors ! Recall their mighty 
deeds ! Remember Uncas ! — and Red Jacket! — and Hole- 
in-the-Day ! — and Horace Greeley! Emulate their achieve- 
ments! Unfurl yourselves under my banner, noble sav- 
ages, illustrious gutter-snipes — " 

"Down wid him !" 

" Scoop the blagard 1" 

"Hang him!" 

"Dhrownd him!" 

It was the quickest operation that ever was. I simply 
saw a sudden flash in the air of clubs, brickbats, fists, bead 
baskets and moccasins — single flash and they all appeared 
to hit me at once, and no two of them in the same place. 
In the next instant the entire tribe was upon me. They 
tore all the clothes off me, they broke my arms and legs, 
they gave me a thump that dented the top of my head till 
it would hold coffee like a saucer ; and to crown their dis- 
graceful proceedings and add insult to injury they threw 
me over the Horseshoe Fall, and I got wet. 

About ninety-nine or a hundred feet from the top, the 



8TAETLING STORIES. 49 

remains of my vest caught on a projecting rock, and I was 
almost drowned before I could get loose. I finally fell, and 
brought up in a world of white foam at the foot of the fall, 
whose ceiled and bubbly masses towered up several inches 
above my head. Of course I got into the eddy. I sailed 
round and round in it forty-four times — chasing a chip, and 
gaining on it — each round trip a half a mile — reaching for 
the same bush on the bank forty-four times, and just exactly 
missed it every time by a hair's breadth. At last a man 
walked down and sat down close to that bush, and put a 
pipe in his mouth and lit a match, and followed me with 
one eye and kept the other on the match while he shel- 
tered it in his hands from the wind. Presently a puff 
of wind blew it out. The next time I swept round him he 
said: 

''Got a match?" 

"Yes — in my other vest. Help me out, please." 

"Not for Joe." 

When I came around again, I said : 

" Excuse the seemingly impertinent curiosity of a drown- 
ing man, but will you please explain this singular conduct 
of yours ?" 

"With pleasure. lam the Coroner. Don't hurry on 
my account. I can wait for you. But I wish I had a 
match." 

I said, " Take my place and I'll go and get you one.' 

He declined. This lack of confidence on his part cre- 
ated a coolness between us, and from that time forward I 
avoided him. It was my idea, in case anything happened 
to me, to so time the occurrence as to throw my custom 
into the hands of the opposition Coroner over on the Amer- 
ican side. At last a policeman came along and arrested 
me for disturbing the peace by yelling at people on shore 
for help. The Judge fined me, but I had the advantage of 



W STARTLING 8TORIE8, 

him. Mj money was with my pantaloons, ana my panta- 
loons were with the Indians. 

Thus I escaped. I am now lying in a critical condition. 
At least, I am lying, anyway — critical or not critical. 

I am hurt all over, but cannot tell the full extent yet, 
because the doctor is not done taking the inventory. Lie 
will make out my manifest this evening. However, thus 
far, he thinks only six of my wounds are fatal. I don't 
mind the others. 

I shall not be able to finish my remarks about Niagara 
Falls until I get better. 



The Marvelous Power of a Cyclone. 

In discussing the two cyclones which visited the Bay of 
Bengal in October, 1876, Mr. Elliott, meteorological report- 
er to the Government of Bengal, incidentally gives Jsome 
idea of the cyclonean forces which are developed by such 
storms. The average "daily evaporation" registered by 
the Bengal instruments in October is " two inches." The 
amount of heat absorbed by the conversion of this amount 
of water daily over so large an area as the Bay of Bengal 
is enormous. "Roughly estimated," said Mr. Elliott, "it 
is equal to the continuous working power of 300,000 steam 
engines of 1,000 horse power." A simple calculation will 
show that it sufiices to raise aloft 45,000 cubit feet of water 
in twenty-four hours from every sq^uare mile of the bosom 
of the bay, and transports it to the clouds which overhang 
it. When we extend the calculation from a single square 
mile to the area of this whole Indian Gulf, the mind is lost 
in the effort to conceive the force which, in a day's time, 
can lift 50,000,000 tons! Yes, it would be easy to show 
that such figures, fabulous as they seem, do not adequately 
represerit the cyclonic forces of a single storm. 



STARTLING ST0EIE8. 61 

Strange Dreams. 

Some years ago, says the Temple Bar, it is related, a 
peddler was murdered in the north of Scotland, and the 
crime remained for a long time a mystery. At length a 
man came forward, and declared that he had had a dream 
in which there was shown to him a house, and a voice di- 
rected him to a spot near the house, where was buried the 
pack of the murdered man ; and, on search being made, the 
pack was actually found near the spot. At first it was 
thought that the dreamer was himself the murderer, but 
the man who had been accused, confessed the crime, and 
said that the dreamer knew nothing about it. It turned out 
afterward that the murderer and the dreamer had been 
drinking together for several days a short time after the 
murder. It has been suggested, as a possible solution, 
that the murderer allowed statements to escape him whilst 
under the influence of drink, which had been recalled to 
the other in his dream, though he had not the shghtest re- 
membrance of them in his sober hours. 

A gentleman dreamt his house was on fire; and the 
dream made so vivid an impression that he immediately 
returned, saw it on fire, indeed, and was just in time to 
save one of his children from the flames. 

A lady dreamt that an aged female relative had been 
murdered by a black servant, and this dream was repeated 
so often that she repaired to the old lady's house, and set 
a gentleman to watch in the night. About 3 o'clock in the 
morning the black servant was discovered going to his 
mistress' room, as he said, with coals to mend the fire — a 
sufiiciently absurd excuse at such an hour and in the middle 
of summer. The truth was apparent when a strong knife 
was found buried beneath the coals. 

The case of the gentleman from Cornwall who dreamt 
eight days before the event that he saw Mr. Perceval mur- 



52 STARTLING STORIES. 

dered in the lobby of the House of Commons by Belling- 
ham, and distinctly recognized from prints, after the mur- 
der, both the assassin and his victim, whom he had never 
seen previously, seems capable only of a supernatural ex- 
planation, especially when it is remembered that the gentle- 
man was with difficulty dissuaded by his friends from going 
to London to warn Mr. Perceval (known to him in his 
dream as Chancellor of the Exchequer). He urged that it 
had occurred three times in the same night, but his friends 
thinkiug it a fool's errand, he allowed the matter to drop 
till the news of the murder rudely resuscitated it. 

A gentleman from Yorkshire formed one of a party for 
visiting the Exhibition of 1862. A few days before leaving 
for London, he had a most vivid dream of the Tower, the 
armory, and more especially the room in which the regalia 
and crown jewels are kept. He heard the old woman who 
showed the room address the audience, and treasured up 
carefully her very peculiarities of voice, dress, manner, 
and features, and created considerable amusement among 
his friends by mimicking the phantom show-woman when 
he awoke. He went to London at the proper time, and, 
of course, visited the Tower, where he was astounded and 
somewhat sobered by the phantom's counterpart, which 
was identical in every respect. 

The mother of a medical student dreamt that her son 
had got into some serious trouble in London, and could not 
rest till she had left her home in the Midland counties and 
sought him out. To her sorrow the dream was painfully 
verified, and the consequences might have been serious if 
she had not arrived in time. 

Several years ago the newspapers were filled witli details 
of a horrible murder, of which the facts, related from 
memory, seem to be these : Mrs. Martin, the wife of a 
farmer, was in terrible distress of mind beqause her daughter 



STARTLING STOKLLS. 53 

Maria was missing. It was feared she had been murdered 
by her sweetheart, in a fit of jealousy, and hidden some- 
where. For a long time no trace of the body could be 
found. At length the mother had a dream, in which it 
was revealed to her that the corpse of her child was buried 
under the barn floor. This proved to bo the case, the body 
was recovered, and the murderer detected. 

A barrister of great penetration relates the story of a 
lady who dreamt that a railroad guard was killed in a col- 
lision. She described the man and circumstances so faith- 
fully that there was no difficulty in identifying the guard 
(who was actually killed the same night in a lamentable 
accident) as the man she saw in the dream. The lady 
rarely left home, and the guard was quite unknown to her. 

Archdeacon Squire, in a paper read before the Eoyal So- 
ciety in 1748, tells the story of a certain Henry Axford, of 
Devizes, who caught a violent cold when he was 28 years 
of age, which rendered him speechless, and he remained 
dumb for four years. In July, 1741, in his sleep he 
dreamt that "he had fallen into a furnace of boiling wort, 
which put him into such an agony of fright that he actually 
did call out aloud, and recovered the use of his tongue 
from that moment as effectually as ever." 

Horace Bushnell, D. D., in his "Nature and the Super- 
Eatural," recounts a case which he thinks cannot be ex- 
plained by natural causes. Sitting by the fire one stormy 
November night, in a hotel parlor in the Napa valley of 
California, there entered a venerable-looking person named 
Captain Tount, who had come to California as a trapper 
more than forty years betore. There he lived, had ac- 
quired a large estate, and was highly respected. The Cap- 
tain said that "six or seven years previous he had a dream 
in which he saw what appeared to him to be a company of 
emigrants arrested by the snows of the mountains, and 



64 STARTLING STORIES, 

perishing rapidly by cold and hunger. The whole scene 
appeared vividly before him; he noted a huge cliff and the 
very features of the persons, and their looks of agonizing 
despair. He awoke, but shortly after fell asleep again, 
and dreamt precisely the same thing. Being now im- 
pressed with the truth of the story, he told it to an old 
hunter shortly afterward, who declared that he knew the 
spot which exactly answered to his description. This de- 
cided him, and taking a company of men. with mules, 
blankets, etc., they hurried to the Carson Yalley Pass, 150 
miles distant, where they found the emigrants in exactly 
the condition of the dream, and brought in the remnant 
alive. ' ' 



Strange Avocations. 

SINGULAE WATS IN WHICH SOME PEOPLE EARN A LIVING. 

Said a witness under cross-examination : "I am an early- 
caller. I calls different tradesmen at early hours, from 1 
till 5:30 in the morning, and that is how I get my living. 
I gets up between 12 and 1 ; I goes to bed at 6 and sleeps 
till the afternoon. I calls bakers between 1 and 2 — the 
bakers are the earliest of all." "What sort of a living he 
made is not recorded. A pound a week, we would say, 
would be the outside figure, and to earn that he would 
need a couple of scores of customers. The early-caller's 
fee is well-earned, since but for his intervention his clients 
would often lose a day's pay, if not be thrown out of work 
altogether, by failing to keep time. 

Not so deserving of encouragement are the ' 'tup-pennies, ' ' 
carrying on their vocations in those quarters of London 
where pawnbrokers and poor people abound. They are 
feminine intermediaries between the pawnbroker and folks 
anxious to raise a loan upon their belongings, who, rather 



STARTLING STOKIES. 55 

than transact such business for tliemselves, are willing to 
pay two-pence for every parcel conveyed to everybody's 
''uncle," or redeemed from his clutches. These go- 
betweens, it is averred, also receive a quarterly commission 
fn.m the tradesmen they favor with their patronage ; and 
so, one way and another, contrive to make a comfortable 
living out of their neighbors' necessities. 

There are men in Paris, birds of a feather with the 
chiffonier, who go from hospital to hospital collecting the 
linseed poultices that have served the turn of doctor and 
patient ; afterward pressing the oil from the linseed, and 
disposing of the linen, after bleaching it, to the paper- 
maker. Others make a couple of francs a day by collect- 
ing old corks, which, being cleaned and pared, fetch, it is 
said, half a franc per hundred. 

A lady resident of the Faubourg St. Germain is credited 
with earning a good income by hatching red, black and 
brown ants for pheasant preservers. One Parisian gets 
his living by breeding maggots out of the foul meats he 
buys of the chiffoniers, and fattening them up in tin 
boxes. Another breeds maggots for the special behoof of 
nightingales ; and a third marchand (Tastioots boasts of 
selling between thirty and forty millions of worms every 
season for piscatorial purposes. He owns a great pit at 
Montmartre, wherein he keeps his store. Every day his 
scouts bring him fresh stock ; for wliich he pays them from 
five to ten pence per pound, according to quality ; reselling 
them to anglers at just double those rates, and clearing 
thereby somethmg over £300 a year. 

This curious avocation is not unknown in England. Some 
twelve years ago, we are told, Mr. Wells, a fishing-tackle 
maker of Nottingham, in order to insure a constant supply 
of bait for his customers, started a farm for the rearing of 
lobworms, cockspurs, ring-tailed brandlings, and other 



56 STARTLING STORIES. 

worms in demand among the disciples of "Walton, who 
abound in the old lace town. To keep his farm stocked 
men and bojs go out at night collecting worms in the 
meadows and pastures ; a warm, moist night yielding from 
two to six thousand worms. As soon as they are broi!ght 
in they are placed in properly selected moss — field-moss for 
choice — to scour until they become little more than ^kin — 
freshly-caught worms being too tender for the anglers to 
handle; while " when a worm is properly educated, he is 
as tough as a bit of india-rubber, and behaves as a worm 
should do when put upon the hook." When this condition 
is attained the worms are packed in moss and put up in 
light canvas bags for the market. This worm merchant 
does not entirely depend upon the industry of his col- 
lectors, but breeds large quantities himself in his own gar- 
den — the component parts of his breeding-heap being a 
secret he not unnaturally keeps to himself. — Chamhers* 
Journal. 



Terrific Balloon Adventure. 

The French aeronauts, Messrs. Gasta, Poramariol, Gau. 
tliier and Perron, narrowly escaped destruction while mak- 
ing a scientific excursion in the clouds recently. They left 
Angers at 6 o'clock in the evening, duly equipped. They 
were in high spirits, and for a time all went well. As night 
came on, and they made preparations to descend, a terrific 
storm arose. The balloon swept on with resistless force 
over miles and miles of country, until, to their horror, the 
aeronauts suddenly saw the lights of Nantes in the distance. 
Beyond lay the immense, somber ocean. They at once saw 
that they must descend at all hazards or perish. Opening 
the valve they came down with a tremendous run, and in 
one minute they_ actually struck the earth no less than six 



SIAKTLING STORIES. 6T 

times. Each time the balloon rebounded like an India- 
rubber ball to the tremendous height of over two hundred 
feet. The travelers clung tenaciously to the ropes, uttered 
not a single word, but grimly prepared for death. At last 
the silence was broken by M. Gauthier, who exclaimed, 
"My legs are broken!" The balloon swept on, dragging 
over the ground, which it regularly plowed up wherever it 
passed. At last the ©ronauts were seen by some peasants, 
who hastened to their assistance, and with great difficulty 
extricated them from the wreck. The balloon, thus light- 
ened, rose, and once more dashed into the forest of La 
Rocheservieres, where it went to pieces. 

MM. Gasta and Pommariol were no sooner on terra firma 
than they fainted. All of the four travelers were more or 
less injured. 



Terrible Adventure with a Rattlesnake in a Mine. 

Dr. Bartleson, of Arizona, had quite a thrilling experi- 
ence recently. While at Socorro on business he thought 
he would take a look at the mines near town. The object 
of interest is the old mine — we have forgotten the name — 
worked ages ago, for aught any one now living knows, and 
which has two shafts, one recently reopened to a depth of 
forty-live feet, where drifts indicate the first level. No ex- 
plorations beyond a few feet from the depth named have 
been made, though it is evident that the two shafts men- 
tioned are connected at this level. Desirous of a jaunt 
under ground, and at the same time expressing astonish- 
ment that none of the miners of the camp or owners of the 
mine had worked up sufficient curiosity to extend the dis- 
covery, the doctor was lowered into the shaft. Emerging 
from the bucket, a taper was lighted and the drift along 
the vein entered upon. 



58 STARTLING STOKIES. 

A chamber ten bj twelve bj eight was soon entered by 
crawling a distance on all fours, after an examination of 
which and a selection of some ores, the tour of discovery 
was continued. To proceed it was again necessary to crawl, 
and the doctor once more assumed the infantile position of 
locomotion. An advance of a few feet had been made 
when a cold, clammy substance was touched by the hand, 
and two bright, ghstening orbs gradually rose in air and 
flashed back with intensified brightness the feeble rays of 
the taper. Almost instantly a hissing, rattling sound 
startled the hearing, and the doctor realized that he had 
encountered a rattlesnake. To retreat was the work of a 
second, and the chamber just left was soon regained. As- 
suming an upright position, the doctor cast a hasty glance 
at the aperture from whence he had emerged, and lo and 
behold, there approached his adversary, which, when see- 
ing the disturber of his peace, coiled himself for a spring. 

A look was sufficient to satisfy the doctor that the snake 
was one of the largest of his species and a determined foe. 
Immediate action was necessary. To retreat was to invite 
and hasten the attack, with the chances in favor of the 
snake. To take the aggressive, then, was the work of an- 
other second, and picking up a chunk of ore, the doctor 
hurled it with all his might at the protruded, vibrating 
head of the snake, just as he was in the act of springing. 
The exertion of throwing the ore extinguished the taper, 
and the horror of the then situation can well be imagined, 
but never accurately described — the darkness, the dread 
uncertainty of the locality of the reptile, the torturing ignor- 
ance of the success or failure of the blow, the fear to move, 
all combined to intensify the hair-raising, chilling terror of 
the situation. 

To relight the taper was determined upon, though not 
without the realization of the dread fact that the snake 



STAKTLING STOKIES. 59 

would take advantage of the first ray of light and spring 
upon its foe. With fear and trembling the doctor eagerlj 
followed the advancing rajs of the taper as they lit up the 
chamber, and his feelings of relief and joy can well be 
imagined as he saw stretched before him, not three feet 
distant, the stunned body of the snake — the aim with the 
rock had been a success. At this time the doctor bethought 
himself of his revolver, and, placing it near the reptile's 
head, effectually dispatched him. The snake was six feet 
in length, very large around, and numbered nineteen rattles. 
The doctor had explored sufficiently, and regained the sur- 
face as soon as possible. 



An Executioner's Revenge. 

The Paris Figaro tells a terrible story of a headman's 
revenge. Fourteen years ago the murderer Avinain was 
condemned to death. When, on the morning of his execu- 
tion, "Mons. de Paris " entered his cell for the purpose of 
making his usual preparations for conveying him to the 
scaffold, the culprit received him with an outburst of abuse, 
couched in the foulest imaginable language, to which the 
"executioner of high works " listened impassively, appar- 
ently paying no attention to the torrent of insults and im- 
precations thcit flowed from Avinain's lips. Arrived upon 
the scaffold, however, he bound his ''patient" to the plank, 
and then deliberately lowered the death-dealing knife to 
within a few inches of the murderer's neck, examined its 
edge, raised it again to its usual height, and finally loosened 
the catch, with the customary result. As the remains of 
the decapitated assassin were being removed from the scaf- 
fold, one of the officials present observed to the executioner 
that he had not performed his task as quickly as usual. 



60 STARTLING STOFJES. 

"No," replied the latter, with an indescTibable smile, " I 
let him wait a httle." Experience had taught the practical 
headsman how dire is the agony of the last few moments 
preceding the dreadful passage from life to death ; so, mind- 
ful of the wrong inflicted upon him by the doomed man's 
insults, he avenged the outrage with liideou.s completauess 
by "letting him wait a little." 



A Curious Story. 

As John B. Conyer, a farmer residing at Palestine, Ind., 
was watering nine cows at a pump-trough recently, they 
made a stampede down the lane as fast as their legs would 
carry them. The cause of this sudden freak was a mys- 
tery to the hired man, but it was not long before he was 
let into what appeared to be the secret of the stampede. 
Suddenly, although the sky was clear and the atmosphere 
still, a young cyclone, not over twenty feet in breadth, 
darted down from the sky, and, striking the earth near the 
pump, twisted off five large beech trees as though they 
were weeds. 



A Strange Vision. 

About midnight, just after the accident in the Consol- 
idated Imperial Mine, Nevada, the wife of Matthew "Win- 
nie was found on her way to the works. She said she had 
been awakened just befere by her husband, who came all 
mangled to her and told her he had been killed in the mine. 
She got up, dressed herself and started to ascertain the 
truth of what she was only too well convinced was true. 
There had in reality been a fearful accident. Mr. "Winnie 
was indeed killed, and the trembling women went back to 
her children and her desolate home. 



STAfiTLING STORIES. 61 

Bedstead Superstition in Germany. 

Having ordered a neatly constructed single bedstead, 
says a correspondent of London Notes and Queries^ with 
somewhat high and ornamental sides, I was surprised 
when it was brought home to find that the ornamentation 
of one side of the bedstead was not repeated on the oppo- 
site side, it being, in fact, quite plain. I expressed my 
surprise and dissatisfaction to the maker, saying that when 
a bedstead was placed with its head against the wall of a 
room, the sides, then showing, will appear quite unlike — 
one ornamented and the other plain. At this the maker 
expressed his surprise that I should be ignorant of a Ger- 
mon custom and prejudice; "for," says he, "in Germany 
single bedsteads are only placed sidewise against a wall 
or partition, and only removed from this position and 
.placed with the head against the wall to receive a dead 
body." And the worthy maker assured me that nowhere 
in Germany could a native be induced to sleep on a single 
bedstead which had not its side placed against a wall or 
partition. The same objection does not hold against placing 
two single bedsteads side by side, with their heads against 
the wall. 



How He Lost His "Wagon \A^heel. 

In Lincoln County, Nevada, there is a spring of ice-cold 
water that bubbles up over a rock and disappears on the 
other side, and no one has been able to find where the 
water goes. At another point in the same county is a 
large spring, about twenty feet square, that is apparently 
only some eighteen inches deep, with a sandy bottom. The 
sand can be plainly seen, but on looking closer it is per- 
ceived that this sand is in a perpetual state of unrest, and 
no bottom has ever been found. It is said that a teamster. 



STARTLING STORIES. 



on reaching this spring one day, deceived by its apparent 
shallowness, concluded to soak one of his wagon wheels to 
cure the looseness of its tire. He took it oif and rolled it 
into the, as he thought, shallow water. He never laid his 
eyes on that wagon wheel again. 



A Monster Clock. 



The large clock at the English House of Parliament is 
the largest one in the world. The four dials in this clock 
are twenty-two feet in diameter. Every half-minute the 
minute hand moves nearly seven inches. The clock will 
go eight days and a half, and will only strike for seven and 
a half, thus indicating any neglect in winding it up. The 
winding up of the striking apparatus takes two hours. The 
pendulum is fifteen feet long ; the wheels are cast iron ; the 
hour bell is eight feet high and nine feet in diameter, weigh- 
ing nearly fifteen tons, and the hammer alone weighs more 
than four hundred pounds. This clock strikes the quarter 
hours and by its striking the short-hand reporters regulate 
their labors. At every strike a new reporter takes the 
place of the old one, while the first retires to write out the 
notes that he has taken during the previous fifteen minutes. 



A Singular Passenger Train. 

An event probably without precedent in railroad annals 
has just happened at Provins. A passenger train leaving 
Paris at 8:20 p. m. arrived safely at its destination, but on 
getting down to let the passengers out of the cars, the 
guard was astounded to find neither passengers nor passen- 
ger cars. They had forgotten to hook the cars on at Paris. 



STARTLING STORIES. 63 

Josh Billings' Philosofee. 

Don't dispize your poor relasliuns. They may be taken 
suddenly ritch sum day, and then it will be awkward to 
explain things to them ; undoubtedly so. 

Next to a klear konshience for solid comfort cums an 
easy boot. Try both. 

If a young man ain't got a well-oaianccd head, I like to 
see him part hiz hair in the middle. Don't you? 

I don't take any foolish chances. If I wuz called upon to 
mourn over a dead mule, I should stand in front ov him 
and do mi weeping. 

Thare is no man so poor but what he can afford to keep 
one dog, and I hav seen them so poor that they could afford 
to keep three. 

I say to 2 thirds of the ritch people in this world, make 
the most of your money, for it makes the most of you. 
Happy thought. 

1 never argy agin a success when I see a rattle-snaix's 
ed sticking out of a hole ; I bear off to the left and say 
to miself that hole belongs to that snaix. 

The infidel argys just az a bull duz chaned to a post. 
He bellows and saws, but he don't git loose from the post, 
I notiss. Not much. 

I thank the Lord that thare is one thing in this world 
that money kant buy, and that is the wag ov a dog's tail. 
Yure unkle. 

I have seen men so fond ov ar2:ument, that they would 
dispute with a guide-board at the forks ov a kuntry road 
about the distance to the next town. What fools. 

Thare are but fu sights in this life more sublime and 
pathetick than to see a poor but virtuous young man strug- 
gling with a mustach. It iz thus. 

About the hardest thing a fellow kan do iz to spark 2 
gals at one time and preserve a good average. Try it. 



64 STARTLING STORIES, 

I notiss one thing, the man who rides on the kars every 
day is satisfied with one seat ; but he who rides once a year 
wants 4. That's so. 

The man whom you kant git to write poetry or tell the 
truth until you git him haff drunk, ain't worth the invest- 
ment. 

Whenever I see a real handsum woman engaged in the 
wimmin's rights bizzness, I am going to take off mi hat 
and jine the processhun. See if I don't. 

Josh Billings. 



Two Little Pictures. 



Miss Minnie Doyle is a very proper young lady. Last 
week she caught her little brother smoking. 

" You terrible thing, " she hissed, "lam going to tell 
father on you."" 

' ' This is only corn silk, ' ' muttered the boy penitently. 

" I don't care what it is. I am going to tell on you, and 
see that you don't get into that beastly, horrid, degrading 
habit. 1 wouldn't have anything to do with smokers." 
II. 

It is evening. Miss Doyle is sitting on the front stoop 
with Algernon. It is moonlight, and the redolent spirits 
of the honeysuckles and syringa waft bliss to their already 
intoxicated souls. 

"Would little birdie object to my smoking a cigarette?" 

" ISTot at all, " replied Miss Doyle; "I like cigarettes. 
They are so fragrant and romantic. I think they are just 
too delicious for anything." 

"Then I'll light one." 

He lights a cigarette, and they talk about the weather for 
two hours and a half. 



STARTLING STOKIES. 65 

Red-Hot Ice. 

Wheo, in the "Midsummer Night's Dream," the Lord 
Chamberlain presents the ingenious play-bill of Bully Bot- 
tom's very tragical comedy to Theseus^ the King exclaims, 
"Merry and tragical! Tedious and brief! Hot ice and 
wondrous strange snow ! How shall we find the concord 
of this discord ?" Such, however, is the advance of science 
that the poet's puzzle has been solved, and the concord of 
hot ice been recently discovered by Mr. Thomas Carnelley, 
of Firth College, Sheffield. This diligent experimentalist 
has found out that any solid can be heated to a considerable 
temperature if the precaution be taken to keep it under a 
pressure less than a certain "critical pressure," which is 
dififerent for different substances. Under this condition the 
solid heats and sublimes away into a vapor without first 
melting into a liquid. There is no intermediate state be- 
tween its solid and its gaseous condition. Acting upon the 
iiint which this general principle gave him, Mr. Carnelley 
put a lump of ice under an air-pump and reduced the ordi- 
nary atmospheric pressure on it to something less than the 
"critical pressure" for ice, and he was then able to heat 
the solid block of crystal ice so hot that it burned the fin- 
gers on being touched. Nor was this all — he actually suc- 
ceeded in freezing a quantity of water in a red-hot cruci- 
ble ! — London Glole. 




ANIMAL STORIES. 



A Dog that was Pensioned by a Legislature. — A Re- 
markable Story. 

In the Territory of New Mexico the Legislature, by 
joint action, recently pensioned a dog for noble services. 
In that country there are many sheep farms, and shepherd 
dogs are so well trained in caring for the flocks of their 
masters, that it is their daily practice to take out the flocks 
in the morning to pasture, guard them all day, and, at 
night, return them to the fold or coral. This work of the 
Mexican dogs is so common and so faithfully performed 
that it is looked upon as a matter of course, and nothing 
more than should be expected from a well-trained dog. 
This being the case, it would appear that the dog worthy 
of a pension in that Territory, must have performed some 
very marvelous feat indeed, and something out of the com- 
mon line of canine achievement. And he did. He did 
not save his mistress' life from the murderous fury of the 
savage, nor her child from being brained against a door- 
post or being choked by a huge black snake, for his master 
was not married, and had no wife or babe, bat led a soli- 
tary life in his solitary ranch in a very solitary" part of New 
Mexico. 

It chanced that the dog in question, on returning of an 
evening with his sheep to the fold, discovered that his mas- 



ANIMAL SI OKIES. 



ter was not stirring about, but remained inside tlie shanty 
and kept very quiet. The next evening it was the same. 
The dog, when he penned up the sheep, repaired to the 
shanty, smelled through a crack iu the door his master's 
presence, but the master was still quiet and did not breathe. 
The dog scratched, barked, and even howled, but no re- 
sponse came from within. The door remained closed ; 
no smoke arose from the chimney to greet the early morn. 
But the dog, true to his appointed duty, went out with the 
sheep on the third day, and cared for them while they 
cropped the herbage on the hillsides. But he was getting 
hungry, and that night when he drove the flock into their 
pen, the last one to attempt to go in became the victim of 
his appetite. This method of providing for his own wants 
became a portion of the faithful dog's daily duty. Occa- 
sionally the last sheep to try to enter the fold was seized 
by him and served for supper and for breakfast and dinner 
the following day. As stated before, the ranch to which 
the dog belonged was in a solitary part of the Territory, 
and out of the track of travel and social intercourse or vis- 
itation. 

For two years from the time of the master's death — as 
ascertained by data left by the latter — the faithful dog tend- 
ed the flock committed to his charge, and had fresh mutton 
for supper every night. The flock was not decimated by 
this steady drain upon its resources. On the contrary, it 
increased its numbers, and when, at the end of two years 
from the time of the death of the proprietor the ranch 
was visited and the remains of the poor fellow found, the 
dog was still at his post of duty, jealously guarding his 
flock, and driving them to the best pastures every day, and 
to the fold at night, before which he slept, to keep the wild 
sheep-eaters of the plains at a civil distance. Such fldehty 
excited admiration wherever the stoi-y was told, and the 



ANIMAL STOKIES. & 

Arcadian legislators of the Territory, in a fit of generosity 
and enthusiasm, at their session two years ago (they have 
biennial sessions in that happy country) granted a pension 
for life to that dog, to bo paid from the State Treasury as 
a reward for his fidelity, and no doubt as an encouragement 
to all other shepherd dogs in that Territory to be good 
dogs and faithful. 

A Duck as a Trout-Fisher. 

As a gentleman was fishing in a mill-dam below Win- 
chester, Ya., he accidentally threw his line over a strong 
white duck, which, suddenly turning round, twisted the 
leader around her own neck, and fixed the hook of the 
dropper-fly in her breast. Thus entangled and hooked, 
she soon broke off the leader above the dropper, and sailed 
down the stream with the end of the fly trailing behind her. 
She had not proceeded far before a trout of about a pound 
and a half took the fly effectually. Then began a struggle 
as extraordinary as was ever witnessed — a duck at the 
dropper and a large trout at the end of the fly. "Whenever 
the trout exerted itself, the terror of the duck was very 
conspicuous ; it fluttered its wings and dragged the fish. 
"When the trout was more quiet the duck evidently gave 
way, and suffered herself to be drawn under some bushes, 
where the shortness of the leader did not allow the trout 
to shelter itself. The duck's head was frequently drawn 
under water. By chance, however, the leader got across 
a branch which hung downward into the water ; and the 
duck, taking advantage of the purchase which this gave 
her, dragged her opponent from the hole, and obliged him 
to show his head above water. Then it became a contest 
of life and death. The trout was in its last agonies, and the 
duck in a very weak state, when the leader broke and suf- 
fered them to depart their own way. 



b ANIMAL STOfllES. 

An Elephant's Gratitude. 

A story comes from Tenburj, Eugland, where a men- 
agerie had been paying a visit, which ilhistrates the well- 
known character of the elephant for humane feelings in a 
remarkable degree. Among the animals was a very fine 
female elephant called Lizzie, which was attacked with a 
violent fit of colic and sufifered intensely. A local chem- 
ist, whose success as an animal doctor is well known, treated 
Lizzie and saved the animal's life. On the procession 
passing the chemist's shop one day, the elephant immedi- 
ately recognized her benefactor, who was standing at the 
door of his shop, and, going up to him, gracefully placed 
her trunk in his hand. The chemist visited the exhibition 
at night, and met with an unexpected reception from his 
former patient. Gently seizing the "doctor" with her 
trunk, the elephant encircled him with it, to the terror of 
the audience, who expected to see him crushed to death ; 
but Lizzie had no such intention, and, after having thus 
demonstrated her gratitude by acts more eloquent than 
words, she released the doctor from her embrace and pro- 
ceeded with her appointed task. 



A Dog's Joke on His Master. 

A gentleman connected with the United States Lake Sur- 
vey was engaged one day on the skirt of a wood in Indiana. 
Near him, sleeping lazily in the sun, lay his faithful dog. 
Tiger. Thinking to have some fun with the dog, he gave 
a shout and a jump into the thicket as if all the game ever 
protected by game laws from marauding hunter was dash 
ing through the bushes. As he expected, Tiger came 
bounding and barking to the fray, and soon detecting the 
trick that was played upon him, sneaked back to his lair 



ANIM.VL STOEIES. 



and laid down again. The Surveyor resumed his duties, 
and was hard at work for two or three hours, when, all at 
once, the dog rose from his sleep, set his ears and eyes in 
tiie direction of the wood, gave a bark, and made a rush 
for tlie forest depths. The Surveyor followed the noble 
brute to a tree, up which he was sending canine congratu- 
lations to the prey; but when the Surveyor came, and be- 
gan anxiously to scan the boughs for the hiding game. Tiger 
gave a satisfied "ah wooh !'' bestowed a glance of contempt 
at the Surveyor, and, striking a dignified gait, stalked back 
to his couch with the appearance of a dog that had squared 
up all accounts with the Lake Survey, and had left nothing 
due on either side. 



The Crows in Convention. 

James Hillman, a respectable and well-to-do farmer, liv- 
ing between Orwigsburg and Landingville, Pa., is the 
authority for the following remarkable story : Mr. Hill- 
man has on his farm fifteen acres of timber, which is joined 
by two other pieces of woodland of about the same size. 
One morning, during the early part of the week, Mr. Hill- 
man's attention was attracted by large flocks of crows which 
came from the south, and, as if by common consent, settled 
in the woods mentioned above. During the ensuing three 
days the crows in the woods were reinforced by new ar- 
rivals, until several thousands were present, and the noise 
they made attracted the attention of people for miles 
around. Sentinel crows were posted on the defences around 
the woods, and through them the approach of a man or boy 
was quickly communicated to the body of crows. The 
crows remained in this patch of woods until Monday morn- 
ing, when they all left about the same time, taking their 
course of flight in a northwesterly direction. They left the 



S AXniAL STORIES. 

woods in flocks containing 200 or 300 each, at intervals of 
five or ten minutes, and the departure of one of these flocks 
was the signal for loud and prolonged cawing on the part 
of those remaining behind. Thej all departed in the same 
direction, and the last flock took to wing about an hour 
after the first started. Since then there has not been a 
crow seen in the neighborhood. Mr. Hillman says that 
during their stay in the woods, the crows did not commit 
any depredations on the neighboring cornfields, and but 
few of them ever ventured beyond the confines of the 
timber. 



Superstition and a Black Cat. 

The steel works of the Lackawanna Iron and Coal Com- 
pany at Scranton, Pa., have the reputation of being well 
managed, and as free from accident as any similar estab- 
lishment in the United States, but for all that the mill is 
not free from superstitions. While visiting the works on a 
certain occasion, and watching the glow of the gleaming 
steel as it passed through the various processes from the 
river of fire flowing into the converters to the white, snake- 
like bar that ran, a finished rail, under the saw, an incident 
occurred which at once startled and amused me. A group 
of perspiring workmen, with weapons of various kinds in 
their hands, and their faces wearing an expression of awe, 
rushed past me, exclaiming : 

"There she goes!" 

Some of them fiung pieces of iron and slag at a retreat- 
ing object that ran rapidly through the mill and out at a 
distant door. At first I thought some great accident had 
occurred. The men seemed very much frightened, and 
seemed disappointed when the object of their attention had 
-escaped. I asked the cause of their commotion. 



ANIMAL STORIES. 9 

"Why, didn't you see it?" said one. "It was that 
black cat again!" 

My curiosity being excited, I asked one of the foremen 
for an explanation. 

"It seems odd," he said, "and I know some persons 
will laugh at us, but I tell you that black cat is an omen of 
evil for this estabhshment. Every time we are about to 
have a big accident she enters that door and runs from one 
end of the works to the other. At first we took no notice 
of her, but finally her visits became as regular as clock 
work whenever anything serious was about to occur, and 
the men began to take warning from her and neglected 
their work when she came. They noticed that she never 
halted in the mill, but ran from end to end of it like a 
streak of lightning. That's why you saw us so anxious to 
kill her. The foremen wish to get her out of the way, as 
her visits are so demoralizing to the workmen, and the fact 
that she seems to lead a charmed life and get away every 
time unhurt, rather strengthens the superstition concerning 
her." 



A Famous Goose.— The Companion Bird to the One 
that Saved Rome. 

An interesting rehc is preserved in a glass case in the 
Coldstream Guards' orderly-room at Whitehall. It consists 
of the head and neck of a goose, around which is a golden 
collar with the inscription: "Jacob — Second Battahon 
Coldstream Guards." Beneath it are the words, "Died on 
duty." 

In 1838 a rebellion broke out in our Canadian posses- 
sions, and two battalions of the guards were sent thither to 
assist in quelling it, the battalion already mentioned being 
one of them. Both corps occupied the citadal of Quebec, 



10 ANIMAL STORIES. 

and ip their turn supplied the guards which were ordered 
to be mounted in different parts of the town and neighbor- 
hood. Near one of these guards was a farm-yard which 
had suffered much from the ravages of foxes — animals that 
were at that period a great pest to the colonists, and as the 
farm in question had been suspected of being the meeting 
place of the rebels, a chain of sentries was placed around 
it. One day the sentry, whose duty it was to watch the 
entrance to the farm, had his attention attracted by an un- 
usual noise, and on looking toward the spot whence it pro- 
ceeded, he beheld a fine goose fleeing toward him, closely 
pursued by a fox. His first impulse was to have a shot at 
the latter, but this would have alarmed the guard and 
brought condign punishment on himself for giving a false 
alarm. He was compelled, therefore, to remain a silent 
spectator of the scene, while every step brought reynard 
nearer to his prey. In the height of its despair the poor 
bird ran its head and neck between the legs of the soldier 
in its frantic endeavor to reach the refuge which the sentry 
box could afford ; and at the same momeut the wily fox 
made a desperate grab at the goose, but too late, for ere 
he could get a feather between his teeth, the ready bayonet 
of the sentinel had passed through his body. The poor 
goose, by way of showing its gratitude to its preserver, 
rubbed his head between his legs and made other equally 
curious demomstrations of joy, nor could it ever be pre- 
vailed upon to quit the post, but walked up and down, day 
after day with each successive sentry that was placed there, 
until the battalion left Canada, when the goose was brought 
away with it as a regimental pet to England. 

The most remarkable thing in connection with the story 
is that the goose in turn actually saved its preserver's life. 
Whether the former knew that the sentry was the same 
man or not, must of course forever remain a problem ; but 



ANIMAL STORIES. 



11 



it so happened that he was on that particular post about 
two months afterward, when a desperate attempt was made 
to surprise and kill the unwary sentinel. It was winter 
time, and although it was a bright moonlight night, the 
moon was hidden ever and anon by the scudding clouds 
which seemed to presage an approaching storm. In these 
moments of darkness a sharp observer might have noticed 
the shadows of several men who, unobserved by the some- 
what drowsy sentinel, were endeavoring stealthily to ap- 
proach the post where he stood. Suddenly he heard, or 
thought he heard, a strange, rustling sound, and, bringing 
his musket to his shoulder, he shouted loudly: "Who 
goes there ?" Not a sound, save the echo of his own voice 
in the distance and the sighing of the winter wind among 
the branches of the trees which sood in the deserted farm 
yard, responded to the challenge. 

Several minutes elapsed, during which the soldier 
marched up and down his lonely beat followed by the de- 
voted goose, until, deeming his alarm unwarranted, he 
again "stood at ease" before the sentry-box. This was 
the enemy's opportunity, and the rebels were not long in 
endeavoring to profit by it. Closer and closer they stole 
up toward the post, the thick snow which lay on the ground 
completely deadening the sound of their footsteps. But 
just as two of their number, one on each side of the sentry- 
box, were preparing with uplifted knife to spring ujDon the 
unsuspecting man, the bird made a grand efibrt, rose sud- 
denly on its wings, and swept round the sentry-box with 
tremendous force, flapping its wings right in the faces of 
the would-be assassins. They were astounded and rushed 
blindly forward ; but the sentry, fully aroused to his dan- 
ger, bayoneted one and shot at the other as he was running 
away. Meanwhile, the other conspirators approached to 
the assistance of their colleagues ; but the bird repeated its 



12 ANIMAL SIOfilES. 

tactics and enaoied the sentry to keep them at bay until 
the guard — whom the firing of his musket had alarmed — 
came upon the scene and made them flee for their lives. 

When this incident became known, poor old Jacob be- 
came the hero of the garrison ; and the officers subscribed 
for and purchased the golden collar which the bird after- 
ward wore until the day of his death. 

Upon the arrival of the regiment in London, the bird re- 
sumed its duties with the sentinels posted on the barrack 
gates ; it was exceedingly amusing to watch its move- 
ments as it walked proudly up and down with the sentry, 
or stood to " attention " beside the box when the latter was 
saluting a passing officer or guard. The feathered hero 
was well fed and cared for, and a circular bath filled with 
water was always at his disposal. Children were his es- 
pecial favorites, as they used to bring the creature all kinds 
of food ; but Jacob would never tolerate any liberties ex- 
cept when, in military parlance, he was "standing easy." 
For many years Jacob seemed to bear a charmed life ; but 
he was at length run over by a van. Every effi^rt which 
kindness and skill could suggest was made to save this ex- 
traordinary bird ; but it was of no avail, and he died like a 
true English soldier, at the post of duty after a "sentry-go" 
of not less than twelve years. 



Lynching a Sparrow. 

Many singmar and almost incredible stories, says the 
Syracuse Herald^ have been told concerning the little Eng- 
lish sparrows that infest our parks and highways, but an 
instance that recently came under notice can be vouched 
for. A few days smce an unusual commotion was noticed 
among a large number of sparrows in the vicinity of H. C. 
Brower's house, at the corner of West Jefi'erson and Clin- 



ANBIAL STORIES. 13 

ton streets. The attention of a member was obnoxious 
the others, and a continued effort was made to drive it from 
the nest which it made in the cornice. After a time two of 
the sparrows left the others, and soon returned with a string, 
which was, in some indescribable manner, attached to the 
neck of their obnoxious mate and the other end attached 
to the cornice, from which the little fellow was suspended 
till life was extinct. During this time great commotion 
prevailed among those who witnessed the "execution." 
Any of our readers who may take the trouble to visit Mr. 
Brower's house may see the sparrow still suspended by the 
neck where he was left by his mates. 

A similar execution, says the Oswego Times^ took place 
in this city, not long since, and was noticed in the Times. 
The victim still hangs, or did until recently, on a tree on 
the south side of East Park. 



Anaconda Stories. 



A Paris paper says : "A singular accident occurred re- 
cently at the Museum. In an attack of indigestion, super- 
induced by over-indulgence in greased rabbits, one of the 
boa-constrictors was taken with an attack of vomiting so 
violent that he turned himself wrong-side out, head and all, 
as one would a stocking I The savants at the Museum are 
at their wits' end, having never before encountered a case 
of the sort." This case (says the Buffalo CommerGial Ad- 
vertiser) is indeed an unusual one, but by no means un- 
precedented. A few years ago there was a boa-constrictor 
owned by the late Mr. Yan Amburgh, whose performances 
were even far more extraordinary than those recorded 
above. Some of the feats of this accomplished serpent 
were commemorated in the following lines, written by the 



14 ANIMAL STORIES. 

poet Longfellow iii return for a free admission to the show : 

"Next comes the Anaconda- Boa-Constrictor, 

Called Anaconda for brevity : 
Can swallow an elephant as well as a toad, 

And noted for great longevity. 
He can swallow himself, crawl through himself, 

Come out with much facility, 
Tie himself in a bow-knot, snap his tail, 

And wink with great agility." 

Thus it will be seen that, even in the somewhat repulsive 
department of educated reptiles, our free and glorious Re- 
public is immeasurably in advance of the vain but torpid 
Europeans. 



Miss Clinton's Crickets. 

Miss Lucille Clinton, says a writer in the New York Sun, 
a handsome young artist, who leads a kind of hermit life 
in her studio, at Broadway and Eighteenth street, is in love 
with crickets and cats. About ten years ago Miss Clinton, 
being then a young — very young — school-girl, read Dick- 
ens' story of "The Cricket on the Hearth." Miss Clinton 
was so affected by the story that she dett?rmined to have a 
cricket at any cost. She hunted the fields for days and 
weeks before she even heard a cricket, and it was a long 
time after she did hear the first cricket that she was able to 
find and capture one, so deceptive is the voice and so shy 
are the movements of the cricket. Then it was a long 
time again before the young admirer of crickets learned 
enough about the wants and habits of those sprightly crea- 
tures to be able to carry them through the winter alive and 
bring up the young in the spring. She was very patient, 
though, and now what Miss Clinton doesn't know /about 
crickets isn't worth knowing. She has a large "fernery " 
full of crickets, and a large quantity of eggs, that are ex- 



ANIMAJL, STOKIES. 15 

pected to produce a good many more crickets, if no mis- 
fortune happens. 

Last evening Miss Clinton gave a sort of cricket soiree, 
having invited a number of persons in to hear the crickets 
"sing." The concert was given by about 100 stalwart 
crickets. The listeners, all but Miss Clinton, were ready 
to make affidavit that all the crickets sang exactly alike and 
dreadfully out of tune. But Miss Clinton was equally pos- 
itive that each cricket had a voice that differed from the 
voices of all other crickets ; and she ought to know. 

"Every time I go to the country," said the interesting 
young artist, "I spend most of the time cricketing. I'm 
glad I wasn't in the country yesterday and day before, for 
I would surely have been sun struck while looking for 
crickets. I have already been prostrated twice while crick- 
eting. "When I am riding through the country, whether it 
is in my own conveyance or in a stage, I always have to 
stop if I hear a cricket. Sometimes I make the other pas- 
sengers awful angry by making the driver wait while I go 
off into a field to look for a cricket. They will say I am 
crazy, and that there is no cricket there at all. But I al- 
ways find him, and when I bring him back they say I was 
right, and then they all begin to like crickets from that 
time. I often tame then so that they will creep up my 
arm to the shoulder — I mean outside you know. My cat 
likes the crickets almost as well as I do. I couldn't go to 
sleep if I couldn't hear them singing." 



A Remarkable Dog Story,— "The Sixth Sense." 

In an article on "The Sixth Sense," pubhshed in the 
Popular Science Monthly^ Dr. Felix L. Oswald tells the 
following strange storj : 



16 ANIMAL STOBIES. 

"We often hear of the wondrous sagacity — generally as- 
cribed to memory or acuteness of scent — which enables a 
dog to find his way home by unknown roads, even from a 
considerable distance. I think it can be practically demon- 
strated that this faculty has nothing to do with memory, 
and very little with scent, except in a quite novel sense of 
the word. 

"Last fall, my neighbor, Dr. L. G , of Cincinnati, 

Ohio, exchanged some suburban property for a house and 
ofiice near the City Hospital, and at the same time dis- 
charged a number of his four-footed retainers. A litter of 
poodle puppies were banished to Covington, Kentucky, 
across the river, and two English pointers were adopted by 
a venatorial ruralist in the eastern part of Ohio. The pup- 
pies submitted to exile, but one of the pointers, like the 
black friar in the halls of Amundeville, declined to be 
driven away. He returned, by ways and means known to 
himself alone, once from Portsmouth and twice from Lucas- 
ville in Scioto county, the last time in a bhnding snow storm 
and under circumstances which led his owner to believe 
that he must have steered by memory rather than by scent. 
But how had he managed it the first time? The matter 
was discussed at a reunion of amateur sportsmen and natu- 
ralists, and one opponent of the doctor's theory proposed 
as a crucial test that the dog be chloroformed and sent by 
a night train to a certain farm near Somerset, Kentucky 
(one hundred and sixty miles from Cincinnati); if he found 
his way back he could not have done it by memory. 

The doctor objected to chloroform, remembering that 
dogs and cats often forget to awake from anaesthetic slum- 
bers; but finally Hector was drugged with a dose of 
Becker's elixir (an alcoholic solution of morphine), and 
sent to Somerset in charge of a freight-train conductor. 
The conductor reports that his passenger groaned in his 



b 



ANIMAL STOEIES. 17 

stupor ' Like a Christian in a whiskey fit,' at length relieved 
himself bj stretching and went to sleep again. But in the 
twilight of the next morning, while the train was taking in 
wood at King' Mountain, eighteen miles north of Somerset, 
the dog escaped from the caboose and staggered toward the 
depot in a dazed sort of way. Two brakemen started in 
pursuit, but seeing them, the dog gathered himself up, 
bolted across a pasture and disappeared in the mist. At 
10 a.m. on the following day he turned up in Cincinnati, 
having run a distance of one hundred and forty-two miles 
in about twenty-eight hours. 

Still the test was not decisive. The dog might have re- 
covered from his lethargy in time to ascertain the general 
direction of his journey, and returned to the northern ter- 
minus by simply following the railroad track backward. 
The projector of the experiment, therefore, proposed a new 
test, with different amendments, to be tried on his next 
hunting trip to Central Kentucky. On the last day of Janu- 
ary the dog was sent across the river, and, nem. con.^ the ex- 
perimenter fuddled him with ether and put him in a wicker 
basket, after bandaging his nose with a rag that had been 
scented with a musky perfume. Starting with an evening 
train of the Cincinnati Southern Railroad, he took his 
patient south-west to Danville Junction, thence east to 
Crab Orchard, and finally north-east to a hunting rendez- 
vous near Berea, in Madison County. Here the much- 
traveled quadruped was treated to a handsome supper, 
but had to pass the night in a dark tool-shed. 

" The next morning they lugged him out to a clearing 
behind the farm, and slipped his leash on top of a grassy 
knob, at some distance from the next larger wood. The 
dog cringed and fawned at the feet of his traveling com- 
panion, as if to conciliate his consent to the meditated en- 
terprise, and then slunk off into a ravine, scrambled up the 



18 ANIMAL STORIES. 

opposite bank, and scampered away at a trot first, and by 
and by at a gallop — not toward Crab Orchard, i. e., south- 
east, but due north toward Morgan's Ridge and Boons- 
boro — in a bee-line to Cincinnati, O. They saw him cross 
a stubble field, not a bit like an animal that has lost its 
way and has to turn right and left to look for landmarks, 
but, 'like a horse on a tramway,' straight ahead, with his 
nose well up, as if he were following an air-line toward a 
visible gaol. He made a short detour to the left, to avoid 
a lateral ravine, but further up he resumed his original 
course, leaping a rail fence, and went headlong into a cop- 
pice of cedar bushes, where they finally lost sight of him. 

A report to the above efi^ect, duly countersigned by the 
Berea witnesses, reached the dog's owner on February 4:th, 
and on the afternoon of the following day Hector met his 
master on the street, wet and full of burrs and remorse, 
evidently ashamed of his tardiness. That settled the 
memory question. Till they reached Crab Orchard the 
dog had been under the full influence of ether, and the last 
thing he could possibly know from memory, was a mislead- 
ing fact, namely, that they had brought him from a south- 
westerly direction. Between Berea and Cincinnati he had 
to cross two broad rivers and three steep mountain ranges, 
and had to pass by or through five good-sized towns, the 
centers of a network of bewildering roads and by-roads. 
He had never been in that part of Kentucky before, nor 
ever within sixty miles of Berea. The inclination of the 
water-shed might have guided him to the Kentucky River, 
and by and by back to the Ohio, but far below Cincinnati, 
and by an exhaustively circuitous route. The weather, 
after a few days of warm rains, had turned clear and cool, 
so that no thermal data could have suggested the fact that 
he was two degrees south of his home. The wind, on that 
morning, varied from west to north-west ; and, if it wafted 



ANIMAL STORIES. 19 

a taint of city atmosphere across the Kentucky Elver 
Mountains, it must have been from the direction of Frank- 
fort or Louisville. So, what induced the dog to start due 
north? 



Wiped Out— A Story of the Plains. 

The Detroit Free Press gives the following graphic illus- 
tration of a stampede among a herd of buffaloes : 

What is that ? 

Look closer and you will see that it is a ^unt, grim 
wolf, creeping out of the little grove of cottonwoods, to- 
wards a buffalo calf gamboling around its mother. 

Kaise your eyes a little more, and you will see that the 
prairie beyond is alive with buffalo. Count them. You 
might as well try to count the leaves on a giant maple ! 
They are moving foot by foot as they crop the juicy grass, 
and living waves rise and fall as the herd slowly sweep on. 
Afar out to right and left — mere specks on the plain — are 
the flankers ; brave old buffaloes, which catch a bite ot 
grass and then sniff the air and scan the horizon for intima- 
tion of danger. They are the sentinels of the herd, and 
right well can they be trusted. 

The wolf creeps nearer ! 

All the afternoon the great herd has fed in peace, and as 
A now slowly moves toward the distant river it is all uncon- 
scious that danger is near. Look you well and watch the 
wolf, for you are going to see such a sight as not one man 
in ten thousand has ever beheld. 

Creep — crawl — skulk — now behind a Knoll — now draw- 
ing himself over the grass — now raising his head above a 
thistle to mark the locality of his victim. It is a lone, 
shambling, skulking wolf, lame, and spiteful, and treacher- 
ous. Wounded or ailing, he has been left alone to get on 



ANIMAL STOK[Lrf. 



as best be may, and bis green eyes ligbt up with fiercer 
blaze as he draws nearer and nearer to his unconscious prey. 

There ! No, he is yet too far away. Creep, creep, creep. 
Now he is twenty feet away, now fifteen, now ten. He 
hugs the earth, gathers his feet under him, and be bounds 
through the air as if shot from a gun. He is rolhng the 
calf over and over on the grass in three seconds after he 
springs. 

Now watch ! 

A cry of pain from the calf — a furious bellow from the 
mother as she wheels and charges the wolf — a startled 
movement from a dozen of the nearest animals, and a rush 
begins. The one wolf is magnified into a hundred, the 
hundred into a thousand. Short, sharp bellows, snorts of 
alarm, a rush, and in fifty seconds after the wolf has wet 
his fangs with blood that living mass is in motion to get 
away from an unknown terror. The waves rise higher and 
higher as the confusion spreads. One instant it seems as if 
10,000 solid acres of prairie were moving bodily away — 
again waves rise and fall as the cowards behind rush upon 
those in front who wait to sniff the air and learn the danger. 
In one minute the alarm runs down the herd to the leaders 
— further than the eye can see, and the entire herd is going 
off at a mad gallop, heads down, eyes rolling, and no thought 
but that of escape. If Lake Erie were to dash itself against 
a wall, the shock would be no greater than the awful crash 
with which this mass of rattling hoofs, sharp horns, and 
hairy bodies would meet it. The clatter of hoofs and rattle 
of horns would drown the noise of a bi'igade of cavalry 
galloping over a stone-paved road. 

Ride out on their trail. Here where the stampede began 
the ground is torn and furrowed as if a thousand cannon 
had been firing solid shot at targets. Here and there are 
calves which hav<^ been sored or crushed — here and there 



ANIMAL ST(»KIES. 21 

older animals with broken legs and disabling wounds. 
Here, where the herd was fairly off, you. might as well hnnt 
for a gold dollar as a blade of grass. You look for three 
miles as you look across it. It is a trail of dirt, and dust, 
and ruts, and furrows, where half an hour ago was a carpet 
of green grass and smiling flowers. The most dreadful 
cyclone known to man could not have left more horrible 
scars behind. 

Miles away, on the banks of the winding, growling river, 
are three white-topped emigrant wagons. A camp-fire 
blazes up to boil the kettles, — men, women and children 
stand about, peering over the setting sun at the distant 
mountains, and glad that their journey is almost done. 
Butterflies come and go on lazy wing, the crickets chirp 
cheerily in the grass, and the eagles sailing in the blue 
evening air have no warning to give. 

Hark ! Is that thunder ? 

Men and women turn in their tracks as they look in vain 
for a cloud in the sky. That rumble comes again as they 
look into each other's faces. It grows louder as women 
turn pale and men reach for their trusty rifles. The ground 
trembles, and afar off comes a din which strikes terror to 
the heart. "Indians!" they whisper. No! A thousand 
times better for them if savage Pawnee dared ride down 
where these long-barreled rifles could speak a defense of 
the peaceful camp. 

"A stampede of buffaloes !" gasps one of the men as he 
catches sight of the advance-guard under the awful cloud of 
dust. Rifles are ready for a shot, and the children climb 
up on the heavy wagon-wheels to see the strange procession 
gallop by. 

Here they come ! Crack ! crack ! crack ! from three 
rifles, and a shout as each bullet tells. Next instant a 
sbaggy head, followed by a dust-browned body, rushed 



Yii ANIMAL STOEIES. 

through the camp. Then another, and another. The men 
shout and wave their arms ; the women and children turn 
paler yet. 

The roar and din shut out every other sound, and the 
was^ons jar and tremble with the concussion. Now another 
shaggy head — another — half-a-dozen — a score — a hundred 
— a great living wave which sweeps along with the power 
of a tornado, followed by others more fierce and strong, 
and the camp is blotted off the face of the earth more com- 
pletely than by any power of Heaven. Nothing to be seen 
— no shout to be heard. Wave followed wave across the 
spot — over the bank — into the stream and across, and when 
the last of the herd had passed, the keenest hunter could 
find nothing on that spot, of wood, or iron, or cloth, or bone, 
or flesh, to prove that a dozen men, women and children 
were there wiped out of existence, and reduced to shred 
and dust. 



Peculiarities of a Massachusetts Swan. 

Yisitors to Pine Grove Cemetery, Milford, Mass., are 
much surprised to see a swan standing on a grave near a 
child's rocking-horse. The swan utters a shriek if any one 
attempts to approach the grave. Some years ago the male 
to the swan died, and soon after the rocking-horse was 
placed on the newly-made grave, when the surviving swan 
immediately stationed himself as protector over the horse. 
If the father of the little boy who is buried there approaches, 
the swan makes no outcry, but no one else is allowed to ap- 
proach the spot. Recently the horse was taken away and 
painted, and while it was absent the swan took no notice of 
the grave, but passed its time on the pond or in its house ; 
but when the horse was, replaced, the swan took up its 
position by its side, thus showing that it was the rocking- 



ANIMAL STOKIES. 23 

horse and not the grave that was the object of its vigil. It 
is rumored that the trustees ordered the horse removed, 
but the owner of the lot refused to comply with the com- 
mand, because his son had requested that it be placed above 
liis grave. 



Snakes Catching Fish. 

One day, says a writer in Forest and Stream^ while 
catching minnows as usual, I noticed a number of snakes, 
the common water moccasin, approaching the dam or foot- 
way of stones. The water yet lacked several inches of 
reaching the top of the stoneway, although it was rushing 
in quite rapidly, and carrying with it many bull-minnows 
and small white perch which were unable to resist it. 
Watching the snakes, I saw one after another reach the 
dam and take their station upon it, submerging themselves 
all but their heads, which were raised about an inch above 
the water, and pointed in the direction of the incoming 
tide. In this position I counted seventeen snakes, arranged 
in uneven intervals, in a space of less than sixty feet. I 
came to the conclusion at once that they were fishing, and 
watched them with a good deal of interest. Pretty soon I 
saw one head strike forward, going under the water, reap- 
pearing in a moment with a very large bull-minnow in its 
mouth. The snake immediately loosened its hold upon the 
rocks and swam for the shore, reaching which it disap- 
peared in the bushes ; and this was repeated at intervals by 
each of the seventeen snakes. When they returned from 
the bushes, having made short work of their "catch," each 
snake sought his own particular location on the rocks, there 
being no clashing of interests there. Now, how is this for 
reason or instinct ? How do these snakes know where to 
locate themselves, and the particular stage of the tide at 



24: ANIMAL SIOEIES. 

whicli to start on their fishing excursion? How do they 
know that a number of minnows will be swept over the 
miniature falls made bj the rocks ? These are questions 
that go beyond my comprehension, and I leave them for 
others to answer. But the facts remain, and any one who 
will take the trouble may verify them at any time during 
the summer by a visit to Gravelly Creek. 



Hunting the Kangaroo. 

The kangaroo, as is well known, is found only in Aus- 
tralia and Tasmania. Its means of locomotion and defense 
are so peculiar, and its swiftness so great, that the chase of 
it is attended with excitement and dangers wholly unique. 
The following interesting chase is from a correspondent of 
the San Francisco Chronicle : 

At 9 o'clock this morning ten men, including myself, 
started on horseback, with four dogs, on a chase. All were 
experienced in the business except a young Englishman 
and myself. We took no firearms, a large stick being the 
only weapon to be used. We had no difficulty in finding 
the animals. It was disdained to avoid such fences as we 
found, and we jumped several of a height of four to five 
feet, always approaching them at full run. We divided 
the party, half going to each side of a partly open plain. 
I soon saw a large kangaroo and two small ones coming 
toward our party. We waited until they were near enough 
to see us, when they made a right angle and went oflf at an 
astonishing pace, in jumps of fifteen to twenty feet in 
length, going from eight to ten feet in the air at each jump. 
We "went for" the big one, but he quickly got beyond 
our sight, the three having already distanced the dogs. 

The kangaroo dogs hunt by sight, like the grayhound. 



ANIMAL STOEIEd. 25 

These three were all lost, we learned as we met at the 
point agreed upon. We next surrounded another large 
tract of forest, plain and meadow, this time dividing the 
dogs. In a few moments a hundred or more kangaroos 
came bounding toward the party with me. The dog with 
me started for them, and all the dogs and men were at once 
in pursuit. The kangaroos divided into sereral parties, 
each dog selecting one to follow, and each man following 
some of the dogs. Mj dog went for a boomer, and I also, 
in company with two others of the party. The boomer 
stood up, took a long look at us, and then flew. We fol- 
lowed him among the trees and branches, jumping logs and 
debris of all kinds, and across plains at a fearful rate. The 
horses needed no urging ; their blood was up now. The 
dog "laid to it," but made no sound. When he would 
get near the kangaroo the animal would jump at right 
angles, and change his course, while the dog would shoot 
on a distance before turning. 

After a run of this kind for some distance the kangaroo 
started for a swamp. After reaching that, and going in a 
distance, he turned his face toward us, standing on his hind 
paws to a height of seven feet, and prepared for battle. 
The dog went for him, and the fight commenced. The 
dog succeeded in getting hold of his tail, and was carried 
in the air some distance by repeated jumps. The dog then 
lost his hold, and was seized and put under the water. 
Owing to my having the best horse, I was first to come to 
the dog's aid. I was warned by shouts not to approach 
the animal, but disregarded them and showed myself a 
good kangaroo hunter. The animal proved to be eight 
feet long. The rest of the party killed two smaller ones, 
and later in the day, at another chase, another large one 
was killed. The females do not fight, but run so swiftly 
that they are rarely overtaken. 



26 ANIMAL STOEIES. 

Rivalries and Jealousies of Birds. 

John Burroughs, under the head of "Spring Notes," in 
the Christian TJnion^ writes the following interesting 
paragraph concerning the rivalries and jealousies of birds : 
"I notice that during the mating season of the birds, the 
rivalries and the jealousies are not all confined to the males. 
Indeed, the most spiteful and furious battles, as among the 
domestic fowls, are frequently between females. I have 
seen two hen robins scratch and pull hair in a manner that 
contrasted strongly with the courtly and dignified sparring 
usual between the males. The past March a pair of blue- 
birds decided to set up housekeeping in the trunk of an old 
apple tree near my house. One day an unwedded female 
appeared and probably tried to supplant the lawful wife. I 
did not see what arts she used, but I saw her being very 
roughly handled by the jealous bride. The battle continued 
nearly all day about the orchard and grounds, and was a 
battle at very close quarters. The two birds would clinch 
in the air or on a tree, and fall to the ground with beaks 
and claws locked. The male followed them about, but 
whether deprecatingly or encouragingly 1 could not tell. 
Occasionally he would take a hand in, but whether to sepa- 
rate them or whether to fan the flames, I could not telL So 
far as 1 could see he was highly amused and culpably in- 
difi'erent to the issue of the battle." 



A Pretty Little Pet. 

Several days ago, says a writer in the Cincinnati Gazette^ 
a lady living on Browne Street heard a bird cry as if in 
pain, in the yard outside the door, and upon investigation 
found a young humming-bird in the talons of the family 
cat. She promptly rescued the tiny fellow and found it to 
be but little hurt, though enough to warrant her taking an 



ANTMAT, STORIES. g"^ 

interest in its convalescence. She took it into the house 
and kept it till the next day, when, on taking it to the door 
to let it go, the bird flew up into a tree and refused to go 
further away, finally returning to her hand. Charmed with 
the confidence displayed by the pretty creature, the lady 
took it fully in charge, and since then has fed and cared 
for it as for any other pet. The bird is of a beautiful russet 
gold in color, seems to know its benefactress, and has 
charmingly coquettish ways. It permits its mistress to 
handle it without exhibiting fear, and seems to enjoy being 
stroked and being petted. When it gets hungry it makes 
a plaintive call, and is then fed from a fresh petunia, into 
whose depths have been sprinkled sugar moistened with 
water, in imitation of the honey that is the natural food of 
the bird in freedom. The bird enjoys its meal with gusto, 
and calls for about twenty of them daily. It is very sel- 
dom that one of these dainty birds is caught, and still more 
rarely is one kept alive, to say nothing of becoming a pet, 
as is the case with the one spoken of. 



A Hen's Curious Hatch. 

A gentleman of Ealeigh, of unquestionable veracity, re- 
lates a story whose truth he asserts to be above par. For 
some time past a hen of kis had been conspicuous by her 
absence from the premises, and there were fears that she 
had been lost. These fears were very agreeably dispelled, 
however, on Friday, when she made her appearance, sing 
ing in her gayest manner, and stepping along in her spright- 
liest style. Just behind her were some diminutive objects 
to which she ever and anon gave her undivided attention. 
The slowness of their progress caused the hen's owner to 
rush out and see what the brood was this time. He was 
astonished to see the hen cover with her wings twelve little 



28 ANIMAL STOKIES. 

terrapins. Soon she was reassured, and allowed him to 
get a good look at her treasures. The family were called 
out to see the wonder. The owner of the hen then went 
back the way she had come, and found out how the eggs 
were hatched. A terrapin which had laid the eggs had 
deserted them, and the motherly fowl concluded to sit on 
them. This she had done, and the result was the twelve 
young terrapins. 



The Fox, Crow and Rooster. 

W. P. Levis, proprietor of the "Gem City" paper-mills, 
Dayton, O., has a miniature zoological garden at his mills 
on East Water street, and among the collection of birds 
and beasts, is a diminutive bantam rooster. A few days 
since a tame crow, while taking a meditative walk, came in 
too close proximity to a sly old fox that was feigning sleep 
near his den, where he is confined by a light chain. JRey- 
nard was apparently oblivious to all passing things, but 
that crow has now learned that appearances are very deceit- 
ful, and so are foxes. Before the crow was aware of the 
danger the fox had seized it. Then there was aloud "caw, 
caw," and a flapping of wings, which attracted the attention 
of the little bantam rooster. He took in the situation at a 
glance, and at once rushed to the rescue of his feathered 
companion. The plucky Httle rooster flew into the face of 
the fox, struck hard with wing and spur, and so worried the 
fox that he dropped the crow and gave his attention to the 
rooster, but his feathered antagonist proved as agile as he 
is brave, and so soon as he saw the poor crow, minus a few 
feathers, hop off" safely beyond the limits of Reynard's 
chain, he concluded the law of self-preservation was the 
next best thing in order, so carried it into effect. The 
fox then skulked into his den. 



ANIMAL STORIES. 



Apparent Reasoning Power in Animals. 
During a recent discussion in the columns of Nature^ a 
large number of hitherto unrecorded instances of supposed 
reasoning in animals have come to light, and these have 
been subjected to a criticism which in onlj a few cases can 
be said to have proved wholly destructive. This fate, how- 
ever, undoubtedly befel the instance the publication of 
which led to the present discussion. On a certain window- 
sill, thirteen feet above the ground, the birds during the 
late frosts were regularly supplied with crumbs. One day 
a water-rat was found regaling itself on the sill, which it 
had reached by climbing up a wall-plant, and, as it could 
not possibly have seen the crumbs, the narrator supposed 
that it must have been led there by a process of reasoning 
based on its observation of the bh-ds flocking together, and 
the inference that food must have been the attraction. 
This, however, was afterward shown to be unnecessarily 
far-fetched, as, looking to the acute sense of smell possessed 
hy those creatures, the rat was much more likely to have 
been led to the food by its nose than by any little reasoning 
power it might possess. The brown rat, which in spite of 
incessant persecution contrives to increase and multiply in 
the busiest haunts of men, affords the next example. The 
water-pipes in several houses were found to be leaking, and 
an examiuation proved the leakage to proceed from holes 
gnawed in the lead pipes by rats for the purpose of obtain- 
ing water, there being plenty of evidence about that such 
spots formed their regular drinking places. The question 
thus arose how the rats came to know that the lead pipes 
contained the desired fluid. To this Darwin, on being in- 
terrogated, replied : "Do not they hear the water trick- 
ling?" If this be the correct explanation, it certainly indi- 
cates considerable power of practical reasoning on the part 
of rats. 



30 ANIMAL STORIES. 

Many other explanations have, however, been tendered, 
such as the possible cracking of the pipes through frost, 
thus giving the rat a clue to the water within ; or that the 
pipes might have been gnawed, as they often are, l)ecause 
of their obstructing the creature's tunneling operations ; or 
that the rats did it to sharpen their teeth, or simply be- 
cause, like children, they must do something to work off 
the energy within them, just as cats enjoy scratching the 
legs of a table. The weightiest of these were shown to be 
inapplicable in this instance, so that the rats may mean- 
while be allowed the benefit of a reasonable doubt. In 
discussing this instance, the Rev. G. Henslow raised a 
somewhat new issue by granting that brutes reason, but 
that their reasoning is always practical, never abstract, ex- 
plaining his meaning by an example. A dog that had been 
left alone in a room rang the bell to fetch the servant. It 
had, however, been taught to do so ; had it rung the bell 
without previous instruction, the reasoning which led it to 
do so would have been in his opinion abstract ; as it was, 
it was only practical. Dr. Rae, the famous Arctic traveler, 
attempts to supply the desideratum by recounting an ex- 
periment made to find out whether a terrier which had 
been taught to ring the bell really understood the purpose 
of the action. It was told by its mistress to ring the bell 
while the maid was in the room ; it looked first at its mis- 
tress, then at the maid, but took no notice whatever of the 
order, although it was given more than once. On the girl 
leaving the room the order was repeated, and at once 
obeyed. 

This does not, however, satisfy Mr. Henslow, who thinks 
that had the dog possessed abstract reasoning it would, on 
seeing the girl in the room, have supposed that it had been 
told to ring the bell for some one else. What Mr. Hens- 
low desiderates would seem, however, to have been sup- 



ANIMAL STORIES. 31 

plied in the case of a cat, 12 years old, which, although 
never taught to knock at the door, is and has been for three 
years past in the regular habit of making use of a knocker 
just within his reach, as he stands on his hind legs, in order 
to gain admission. He begins with a single knock, which, 
if not attended to, is followed by the well-known "post- 
man's knock." If this should prove unsuccessful, "trial 
is then made of a scientific rat-tat that would not disgrace 
a West-End footman." The same cat has still further 
shown his appreciation of human ways by developing a 
fondness for brandy and water. 

The elephant generally figures in discussions of this sort, 
and in the present instance a sinsrular example of its rea- 
soning powers is sent all the way from New York. In the 
central part of that city an elephant was observed, during 
a very hot day, taking up great trunkfuls of new-mown 
hay and spreading them over its back, until that part had 
been completely thatched. It then stood motionless, en- 
joying the coolness its own ingenuity had produced. In- 
stinct would have prompted it to eat the grass ; the utilizing 
it for the purpose of screening itself from the sun's rays 
looks altogether like a reasonable act. To find the donkey 
among the number of reasoning animals is probably more 
surprising. The appearance, however, which it makes in 
the columns of Nature is highly creditable to it. A don- 
key, which, when not employed by its master's children, 
used to graze in a field with some cows, was in the habit. 
when milking-time arrived, of lifting the field-gate a:id 
holding it back until all the cows had passed out, when it 
allowed the gate to swing close again, and went home with 
them. This bit of gallantry and intellect it owed entirely 
to nature's teaching. As might have been expected from 
the greater opportunity man has of observing them, from 
the training which their faculties undergo, and their exemp- 



32 ANIMA.L STOJRIES. 

tioh from that struggle for a mere subsistence, which is 
supposed to hinder the development even of man's intel- 
lectual powers, the domesticated animals afford most of the 
examples of animal reasoning. 

Many of the far-bearing animals of North America, how- 
ever, have long been known for their cateness in circum- 
venting the trapper, and Dr. Rae testifies to this in the 
case of the arctic foxes. Wishing to capture some of these 
he tried various traps, but as thej were all familiar to the 
foxes they were of no use ; he accordingly tried a form of 
trap new to that country, consisting of a loaded gun fixed 
on a stand, and pointing to the bait, which was connected 
to the trigger by a string thirty yards in length, and for 
most of its length concealed under the snow. The bait, 
on being seized, caused the gun to go off, and the fox thus 
committed involuntary suicide. By this new stratagem Dr. 
Rae secured one fox, but no more. The survivors set 
themselves to unravel the mystery, and that they succeeded 
was soon shown by the methods they adopted to secm-e the 
bait without losing their lives. They either cut the string 
connecting the bait with the trigger, or, burrowing up to it 
beneath the snow at right angles to the string, they pulled 
it down beneath the line of fire. These are only a few ex- 
amples of the many which have lately been made public, 
and they will probably suffice to show that, however great 
may be the difference between the animal mind and that of 
man, animals are at least not destitute of reasoning power. 
The ultimate source of this difference is behoved by many 
to be in the possession by man of the faculty of speech, by 
which he can deal with abstract ideas too complex to be 
capable of development without the aid of language. If 
this be so, the question whether human intelligence differs 
from that of brutes m kind, or merely in degree, "hinges 
entirely," as Mr. Romanes expressed it lately before the 



AJ^^IMAL STORIES. 



British Association, "on the question whether the faculty 
of speech has an origin natural or supernatural." 



Music and Mice. 



Though the great naturalist, Linnaeus, in speaking of the 
common mouse, said "delectatur musica," yet so little was 
it credited, that Gmelin omitted mentioning this feature in 
his edition of Linnaeus' Systema Naturce. Subsequently, 
however, the assertion has been satisfactorily confirmed. 
Dr. Archer, of Norfolk, in the United States, says: " On 
a rainy evening in the winter of 1877, as I was alone in 
my chamber, I took my flute and commenced playing. In 
a few minutes my attention was directed to a mouse that I 
saw creeping from a hole, and advancing to the chair in 
which I was sitting. I ceased playing, and it ran precip- 
itately back to its hole ; I began again shortly afterward, 
and was much surprised to see it reappear, and take its old 
position. The appearance of the little animal was truly 
delightful ; it couched itself on the floor, shut its eyes, and 
appeared in ecstasy ; I ceased playing, and it instantly 
disappeared again. The experiment I repeated frequently 
with the same success, observing that it was always differ- 
ently affected, as the music varied from the slow and plain- 
tive, to the brisk and lively. It finally went off, and all 
my art could not entice it to return." 

A more remarkable instance of this fact appeared in the 
Philadelphia Medical and Physical Journal, in the year 
1817. It was communicated by Dr. Cramer, of Jefferson 
county, on the credit of a gentleman of undoubted veraci- 
ty, who states that one evening in the month of December, 
as a few officers on board a British man-of-war, in the har- 
bor of Portsmouth, were seated round the fire, one of them 
began to play a plantive air on the violin. He had scarce- 



34r ANIMAL STOKIES. 

ly performed ten minutes, when a mouse, apparently fran- 
tic, made its appearance in the center of the floor. The 
strange gestures of the little animal strongly excited the 
attention of the officers, who, with one consent, resolved 
to suffer it to continue its singular actions unmolested. Its 
exertions now appeared to be greater every moment — it 
shook its head, leaped about the table, and exhibited signs 
of the most ecstatic delight. It was observed that, in pro- 
portion to the graduation of the tones to the soft point, the 
feelings of the animal appeared to be increased, and vice 
versa. After performing actions which an animal so dimin- 
utive would at first sight seem incapable of, the little crea- 
ture, to the astonishment of the spectators, suddenly 
ceased to move, fell down, and expired without evincing any 
symptoms of pain. 

A Wily Poodle. 
A blind beggar was in the habit of frequenting the Pont 
des Sts. Perez, France, where he used to station himself 
with a clarinet and a very intelligent poodle. Contribu- 
tions poured freely into the little wooden bowl which the 
dog held in his mouth. One day the blind man, who had 
reached an advanced age, was not to be seen. He had 
fallen ill. His companion, however, continued to frequent 
the accustomed spot, and the passers-by, to whom he was 
familiar, understood that his master was unwell, and^ 
touched by his fidelity, dropped their pence into his bowl 
in increased numbers. The beggar went the way of all 
flesh, an event which the wily poodle carefully kept to him- 
self until he also became an absentee from the Pont des 
Sts. Peres. The poor animal was found lying dead in a 
cellar near his former master's abode, a sum of 20,000 
franks in bonds of the Orleans Eailway being discovered 
under the litter on which he was stretched. 



ANIMAL STORIES. 35 

A Fight with a Rattlesnake, and a Remedy for its Bite. 

Peter O'Neill, who lives in the town of Cornwall, seven 
miles south of Newlmrg, N. T., after listening to several 
rattlesnake stories one day, told the following : 

"But now I want to tell you something maybe you won't 
believe. I've heard of one thing and another to cure the 
bite of a rattlesnake, but if you pay attention, you'll hear 
of a wonderful cure which always succeeded. 'Twas over 
thirty years ago, and the man, an old friend, told me about 
it himself. He lived in the mountains near Port Jervis. 
His name was Lambert. He was in the woods doing 
something one day, and he run across a big rattlesnake. 
He and the snake had a hard fight, and the old man was 
struck on the leg by the venomous reptile. He killed the 
snake, and then in some way got home while suffering in- 
tense pain. One of his sons jumped on a horse and rode 
five miles for a doctor. A few hours after another doctor 
was sent for, and the two of them could do him no good. 
There they stood over the old man, who lay on his cot 
senseless and speechless, and dying in great agony. Every 
minute they expected the old man to breathe his last. Who 
it was that spoke of the cure that brought him to life I 
don't know, but it was done at the last minute, when all 
hope had gone. 

They took a lot of the 'touch-me-not weed,' that weed, 
you know, that when you squeeze the top of it it flies all 
over. It was pounded up fine in a pan or kettle that was 
perfectly clean, for if there was any grease about it it won't 
do. Then it was boiled in milk until the stems began to 
bubble up, when it was applied. The old man lay there 
on one side, twitching and jerking, and with every twitch 
and jerk blood would spurt out of a vein near his eye way 
across the room. The poison had gone way up there 



36 ANIMAL SI OKIES. 

through his boay, and the sight was a terrible one. The 
preparation was rubbed all over him and in five minutes he 
was relieved. In halt" an hour he began to talk. In three- 
quarters of an hour he was sitting up in his cot talking, and 
in an hour he was about the room. He soon recovered, 
and was as good as ever. It was a hopeless case, and the 
old man would certainly have died if the weed had not 
been applied. I know this remedy to be a certain cure, 
for I've had cases to try it myself. I never think of snakes 
but my old friend Lambert comes into ray mind." 



The Dog and the Picture. 

A writer in Nature says : In 1843 a young and self 
taught artist asked me to allow him to paint my likeness in 
oil colors, and I consented. His studio was in the next 
town, three miles distant, and, as often as required, I went 
over ; I, however, did not take my dog with me. It was 
done in kit-cat size, and he succeeded so well in the like- 
ness and artistic work that when exhibited at the annual 
meeting of the Polytechnic society at Falmouth a medal 
was awarded to it. " 

When it was brought to my house my old dog was pres- 
ent with the family at the "unveiling;" nothing was said 
to him nor invitation given him to notice it. We saw that 
his gaze was steadily fixed on it, and he soon became ex- 
cited, and whined, and tried to lick and scratch it, and was 
so much taken up with it that we — although so well know- 
ing his intelligence — were all quite surprised ; in fact, 
could scarcely believe that he should know it was my like- 
ness. We, however, had sufficient proof after it was hung 
up in our parlor; the room was rather low, and under the 
picture stood a chair ; the door was left open without any 
thought about the dog; he, however, soon found it out, 



A2J1MAL STORIES. 37 

when a low whining and scratching was heara bj the 
family, and, on search being made, he was in the chair 
trying lo get at the picture. 

After this I put it up higher, so as to prevent it being 
injured by him. This did not prevent him from paying 
attention to it, for whenever I was away from home, wheth- 
er for a short or -long time — sometimes for several days — 
he spent most of his time gazing on it, and as it appeared 
to give hira comfort, the door was always left open for him. 
When I was long away, he made a low whining, as if to 
draw attention to it. This lasted for years, in fact as long 
as he lived and was able to see it. I have never kept a dog 
since he died; in fact I dare not, his loss so much affected 
me. 1 might" tell of many of his wonderful actions; he 
could do most of such things as are related of other dogs. 
I am now only anxious to notice this recognition of my 
likeness, from never having heard of another such fact be- 
ing recorded of any other dog. 



The "Wrong Pig. 



A tame bear recently had an immense amount of fun in 
a country village of France. Its owner, a strolling show- 
man, prevailed upon a farmer, whose house he reached at 
evening, to provide lodgings for the night, and the farmer, 
in an accommodating spirit, removed a fine pig from a stall 
in his barn to make room for the bear. In the middle of 
the night three men, who had arranged to steal the pig, 
broke into the stall, and in the darkness began to kick the 
occupant in the head, to arouse its sluggish energies. When 
the farmer and his guest arrived, the bear had killed one 
of the thieves, fatally injured another, and driven the other 
stark mad with fear. 



38 ANIMAL STOKIES. 

How a Deer Lived Over 3,000 Years. 

This is the "Old Settler's" storj, which was suggested 
by the death of Bill Long, a famous hunter of the Susque- 
hanna Yallej, who died at the age of eighty-three. Said 
his friend : 

"I never think o' Bill Long without havin' to laugh 
about a yarn he told me oncet, when I was campin' with 
him over on the Tionesta, long in '30. The woods was jest 
a humpin' theirselves with game then. There was so many 
deer that the settlers usety have to watch their grain fields 
to keep the deer from eatin' up their rye and oats; and I've 
heerd that two old bucks made up their minds oncet to 
paster on a farmer's rye out there, an' jest waltzed inter 
two men that was watchin' the field, and made 'em take to 
the top o^ a ches'nut tree. Then the bucks fed 'round ez 
cool ez if they'd sowed that rye theirselves, and it wasn't 
nobody's business if they wanted to cut it 'fore 'twas ripe. 
Every time the men 'd make a move to git from their roost, 
one or t'other o' the bucks 'd make for 'em with a blat 
that 'd skeer the fellers out'n their wits almost, and 'd 
send 'em back to the top o' the tree like jumpin' jacks on 
a stick. The deer kep' the men on the tree durn nigh 
half a day, an' then walked ofi" to the woods ez innercent 
ez lambs. 

"One night Bill and me was a tellin' stories in the cabin, 
an' he axed me if I know'd how long a deer would live, 
purvided him nor me wan't a huntm' in the woods where 
the deer was puttin' up. I said no, I didn't, and he said 
he didn't neither. 'But,' says Bill, 'I know a feller that 
b'lieves that deer lives to be more'n three thousand year 
old.' Course we had to laugh at this, and then Bill tells 
me what made this feller think so. 

•The feller's name,' says he, ' is Joel Price, and he's 



U (I 



ANIMAL STOEIES. 39 

a bark-peeler in the Siskyhanner, I was in camp over 
there in 1820. There was a good many deer, and the year 
afore, Bill Carpenter and me hung up more'n a hundred. 
Bill wasn't no hunter. He was alius a losin' suthin' or 
other, and was so durn nervous in the woods that 'bout all 
he was good fur was to cook and to tend to the camp. 
One day I took him out to stand on the runway, and I 
know'd I'd put a big buck right down to him from the 
ridge. But I never heerd nuthin' from him, and when I got 
back to camp, behold ye, there was the wuthless rooster 
settin' by the fire smokin' his pipe, ezif he hadn't come out 
fur to do anything else. I axed him what he left the run- 
way fur, and whether he got a shot. He said he'd lost his 
ramrod, and couldn't do nothin', so he came in. Well, the 
next year, ez I said afore, I camped in the same woods. 
Every night, most, some o' the bark-peelers 'd come to my 
cabin to hear me tell huntin' stories. 

" 'Well, this Joel Price come to my cabin every night. 
He was one o' these arguin' fellers that knows everything 
and don't know nothin' after all. He was great on gettin' 
relics, and takin' 'bout ancient hist'ry. He talked by the 
yard 'bout old Nimrod, and how he hunted, and said he 
b'lieved the hunters o' that time know'd 'bout guns and 
powder. One day he wanted to stand on a runway, and I 
took him out. I druv a buck right to him, and I heerd 
him shoot. I went over to where he was to see what he'd 
done. When I got there I saw he was as white as a sheet, 
and was a hoppin' up and down by the side o' a thunderin' 
big buck he had knocked dead in his tracks by some acci- 
dent or other. When he saw me he more'n hollered. He 
had a ramrod in his hand. 

" ' Great hemlock, he hollered. I've killed the father o' 
all deer, Bill! Here's an animal that they ain't no doubt 
was hunted by the hunters that lived more'n three thousand 



40 ANIMAL STORIES. 

years ago. This ramrod was in his hide. See what it says.' 
"I took the ramrod. On one side, near the big end, 
was cut the letters, B. C, 1S19. 

" ' B. C, 1819 !' hollered Joel. ' More'n three thousand 
years ago! Mebbe ole Nimrod hisself sent that inter this 
yer buck !' 

'"I know'd now how Bill Carpenter had lost his ram- 
rod the year before. He'd been loadin' when he heerd 
the deer a-comin', and got so nervous that he forget to 
take the ramrod out, and had fired it at the buck. It 
plugged inter the buck under the skin, which had healed 
up. Bilj alius cut his 'nitials on every thing he had, and 
the year he done it in. This buck was the same one he 
had shot at. I told Joel how it was, but the durn fool 
wouldn't have it, and he b'lieves to this day that a deer '11 
live to be more'n 3,000 year old if you leave it alone.' " 



The Old Mastiff's Revenge. 
The mastiff in question was old and toothless, but had 
been a good fighting dog in his day, and still loved a fight. 
He was dozing on his master's front porch one day when 
he saw a vigorous, saucy-looking yellow dog prowling about 
outside of the gate. The venerable mastiff made a sortie, 
as it were, and after several minutes' fighting got badly 
licked. He was too old and feeble, and had evidently lost 
his grip. Defeated, he skipped off to the backyard of his 
master's next door neighbor, who had a fine large dog m 
the fighting prime of his existence. A brief conversation 
was held in dog, and the neighboring dog accompanied the 
aged mastiff to the street. That big country dog was look- 
ing around for another old dog to whip, and the mastiff's 
healthy neighbor just went for him. The defeated yellow 
dog seemed pretty soon to have important business in the 
rural districts, judging by the way he scooted out of town. 



ANIMAL bTOKIES. 4:1 

Battling with Lions. 
Mr. F. Falkner Carter, in charge of the elephants at- 
tached to the Royal Belgian expedition into Africa, gives 
the following exciting account of a sudden encounter which 
he had with lions at Kerima, Central Africa, at which place 
he and his caravan of one hundred and eighty men had 
arrived. In a letter received from him by the last mail, 
dated from that station, he mentions the difficulties he had 
experienced in procuring animal food for his men. "Our 
only food," he says, "consists of Indian corn, pounded be- 
tween two stones, with a good share of sand, and only salt 
with it. It is well to have even this, but still, men accus- 
tomed all their lives to good animal food cannot live on 
such poor fare, and so I go out every second or third day 
with my gun and kill a zebra, eland, water-buck, etc. One 
of any of these enables us to live in clover for a single day. 
A recent expedition of this kind, however, nearly cost me 
my life. I felt that I must go in search of food, as there 
was not at the time a morsel in our camp, and so forth I 
sallied. My first shot was at a giraffe, into whom I put 
two bullets, and then followed him over hill and dale until 
poon, when heat, thirst, and want of food obliged me to 
give up the chase. After smoking a pipe and taking some 
rest, I was off again ; got a shot at a zebra, but missed 
him. The zebra, I should mention, is the best meat in 
Africa. Rather disheartened, and grieving for the poor 
hollow-eyed fellows I should meet on my return, for whom 
I had nothing in the shape of food, I turned toward camp, 
and jus't at 3:30 P. M. a fine boar dashed past me. I sent 
a bullet through him at once, but on he went. I knew, 
however, we should find him dead a few hundred yards 
ahead, by the quantity of blood in the long grass ; so I 
followed, but just then sighted three zebras — so dropped 
piggie's trail and went off to try and stalk the zebras. In 



42 ANIMAL STORIES. 

about ten minutes after I beard a fearful row, and my two 
gun-bearers said it was a rbinoceros. I laid hold of my 
No. 10 bore, banding my 'express' to my bearer, telling 
him and the man carrying the smootb-bore to keep close to 
me. I glided silently througb the grass, over six feet high, 
until close to the spot ; then I knew that if it were a rhinoc- 
eros that he was lying down, as I could not see a sign of 
him, so I decided it must be two wild boars fighting. Some- 
thing told me they could not make such a horrible noise, 
which actually seemed to shake the ground and rend the 
very air around me. Strange to say, it never struck me 
that the noise might have proceeded from lions, although 
the place is full of them, so I advanced boldly, dividing the 
grass with my rifle. I then discovered three lions devour- 
ing the pig I had shot, and in that short time had finished 
half of it. The two nearest were within two feet of me, 
and the furthest three and a half feet. The brutes' beards, 
chests and claws were covered with blood. Though startled 
at first, I was perfectly cool, and yet felt perfectly certain 
that I must be killed, as even a tame lion is savage when 
eating his food. The lion opposite caught sight of mo at 
once, curled his lips, lashed his sides with his tail, but what 
the others were doing I cannot say, as my friend was in the 
act of springing, and I dare not take my eye off him for a 
second. At last he crouched for the spring, and I let drive 
in his face, retreating a step to give me a chance with the 
other barrel at one of the remaining two, determined to sell 
my life dearly, but to my great delight these two sprang 
over the grass in opposite directions. I gave a sort of sigh 
of relief, looked around for my gun-bearers, and there they 
were, fifty yards off, trembling with fear and blue with 
fright. The rascals had run away, and I had no gun to fall 
back upon. I returned to pick up my dead hon." 



ANIMAL STOKIES. 4:3 

A Novel Use for the Cat. 

So engrossing is the partiality of the domestic cat for its 
home — so vehement its yearning to return thither when 
circumstances over which it has no control have resulted in 
its transfer to unfamihar localities — that certain Dutch nat- 
uralists have come to the conclusion that Grimalkin may bo 
utilized as a letter-carrier with considerable advantage to 
pubhc interests. These worthies propose to organize a ser- 
vice of post-cats, and are at present engaged, by a series 
of ingenious experiments, in testing pussy's capabihties for 
dehvering the mails. Selecting Luik for their headquar- 
ters, they thence dispatch a number of cats, securely tied 
up in woolen bags, to the neighboring villages, where they 
are freed from confinement and turned loose, with neat 
packages of letters firmly strapped to their backs. At once 
their domestic instincts come into full play, and they swift- 
ly flee homeward with answering directness. Of thirty- 
seven cats, thus constrained to serve their country, not one 
has hitherto failed to fulfill its postal function with excel- 
lent punctuality. 

It is feared, however, that when a double service shall 
be arranged, difliculties and delays may arise from the 
meeting of post- cats on the high road. If the feline post- 
man can be inspired with a high sense of duty, overriding 
personal impulse, all will be well. Failing in this, we ap- 
prehend that irrrgularities in delivery will take place. 



A Boy's Fight with a Panther. 

Two little boys — the oldest fourteen — followed a dog to 
a big tree, up which a panther had gone about sixty-five 
feet. When the eldest lad saw the animal crouched and 
glaring above, he felt that it was either to be a dead pan- 



44 AiJIMAL STORIES. 

ther or a death-struggle between it and himself and little 
brother. He was a good shot generally, but here was to 
be the severest test his young eye and nerves had ever 
been put to, and one that might well have tried an older 
and stouter hunter. He drew the bead and fired, feeling 
as he did so, he says, as if he had been lifted clear ofi" his 
feet. But there was the hungry brute yet, crouching on 
the limb, its eyes fairly fit to burst in their malignant glare. 
Bang went the gun of our brave young hunter, just as the 
panther sprang. It seemed, said the lad, as though the 
animal sprang out from the tree about twenty-five feet, then 
came straight down, lighting on the dog, about sixteen feet 
from the boys. The young hunter again thought he had 
missed. Clubbing his gun, he advanced on the brute to 
strike it, but it rolled over dead before he could do so. 
Examination proved that his first shot had struck about 
four inches back of the heart, the last one in the heart. 
It was bravely and well done, and, but for the steady nerve 
and true aim of the lad, he and his little brother would 
doubtless have fallen victims to the animal's ravenous hun- 
ger. 



His First Tiger. 

Mr. Hornaday, the Rochester naturalist, gives the follow- 
ing description of his first shot at a tiger in the wilds of 
India : 

"After tracking the beast for half a mile, I looked through 
the clump of bamboos, and sure enough there was Old 
Stripes in all his glory, and only thirty yards away. The 
sun happened to be shining full upon him, and he was 
simply gorgeous to behold. He looked perfectly immense. 
I was determined to have a shot at him, hit or miss. When 



ANIMAL STUKIES. 45 

I first sighted him he was walking across the bed of the 
stream, going from ns. I raised my rifle and waited. He 
reached the other bank, snuffed it a moment, and then 
turned and paced back. Just as he got to the middle of 
the stream he stopped short, raised his head and looked 
full at us. It was then or never. Taking a very steady, 
careful aim at his left eye, I fired, and without stopping to 
see the effect of my shot, proceeded to reload with all 
haste. In fact, I fully expected to see the great brute come 
bounding round that clump of bamboos and upon one of 
us, but I thought it might not be us he would attack, and 
while he would be clawing the scalp off one of my men I 
could send a ball into his brain. I expected that my men 
would bolt as soon as they saw me getting ready to fire. I 
should have done so had I been in their place, but they 
stood at my elbow like brave men, although totally un- 
armed. When I had reloaded I looked again for Mr. 
Stripes, and, sure enough, he was there. He was turning 
round and round where he stood, with his head bent round 
to the left, as though there was something the matter with 
his left eye. I waited until his neck was fairly presented, 
then fired again, aiming to hit the neck low. He instantly 
dropped. I reloaded, waited a moment to see if he was 
going to get up, then, with rifle at full-cock, and with the 
tiger carefully covered, we advanced slowly and respect- 
fully. Hfi was done for, and lay there kicking and foam- 
ing at the mouth, but soon became motionless, and I tried 
to realize that my flrst tiger lay dead at my feet. I tell you, 
you will never be able to fully realize the immense propor- 
tions of a full-grown tiger until one springs upon you in the 
jungle, or else lies dead at your feet. Up to that time I 
had had terrible doubts about a tiger being able to pick up 
a man in his mouth and run away with him as a fox does 
with a goose, but when I measured the great brute I under- 



46 ANIMAL STORIES. 

stood how it was done. Just fancy a striped tomcat 9 feet 
8f inches in length, 3 feet 7 inches high at the shoulders, 
3 feet around the jaws, with teeth and claws to match, 
weighing 495 pounds, and you will have an idea of the 
size of that tiger." 



A Cat's Sorrow and Gratitude. 

It was apparent that it was either a cat or a dog, and an 
effort was made to frighten it away from the shadow so 
that curiosity might be satisfied ; but it refused to move 
until actually driven, and then only a foot or two with great 
reluctance. This was sufficient, however, and the ques- 
tion was settled. It was a cat, but why did it seem loath 
to retreat? 

By stooping close to the ground the dead body of a gray 
kitten about half-grown was discovered. The cat, which 
had been driven away, seemed alarmed by the investigation, 
and uttered several half plaintive and defiant cries. The 
gentleman says that he then walked several steps toward 
the south and stopped to see what the old cat was going to 
do. She immediately returned to the dead body, and after 
walking around it for some time, she suddenly raised her 
head and gave another cry. 

This seemed to have been caused by another intruder, 
and by following the direction of the cat's eyes it was seen 
that another cat was the cause of the distress. The latter 
animal was hidden in a cellar door, with the exception ot 
its head. The light fell upon it, and there was something- 
interrogatory about the face. This cat's object seemed to 
be to learn what the other was doing, whilst the guardian 
of the dead seemed to misunderstand the cause of the in- 
trusion. 

A well-aimed brickbat started the inquisitive cat on a 



ANIMAL STOBIE8. 47 

double quick, which doubtless carried him out of the neigh- 
borhood. Immediately after his departure, the mourning 
mother came away from the little corpse and rubbed herself 
against the legs of him who had routed her enemy. She 
also looked up into his face and mewed as if to ask pardon 
for her former unkindness and to give him to understand 
the true condition of her feline heart. Having received a 
little kindness in return, she resumed her lonely watch be- 
side the dead. 



Sagacity of the Canine. 

" I once witnessed," says the Ettrick Shepherd, " a very 
singular feat performed by a dog belonging to John Gra- 
ham, late tenant in Ashiesteel. A neighbor came to his 
house after it was dark, and told him that he lost a sheep 
on his farm, and that if he (Graham) did not secure her in 
the morning early, she would be lost, as he had brought 
her far. John said he could not possibly get to the hill 
next morning, but if lie would take him to the very spot 
where he lost the sheep, perhaps his dog Chieftain would 
find her that night. On that they went away with all ex- 
pedition, lest the traces of the feet should cool ; and I, then 
a boy, being in the house, went with them. The night 
was pitch dark, which had been the cause of the man 
losing his ewe, and at length he pointed out a place to John 
by the side of the water where he had lost her. 'Chief 
tain, fetch that,' said John; 'bring her back, sir.' The 
dog jumped around and around, and reared himself upon 
an end ; but not being able to see anytliing, evidently mis- 
apprehended his master, on which John fell to scolding his 
dog, calling it a great many hard names. He at last told 
the man that he must point out the very track that the sheep 
went, otherwise he had no chance of recovering it. The 



48 ANIMAL STORIES. 

man led him to a gray stone, and said he was sure she took 
the brae (hJl side) within a yard of that. 'Chieftain, come 
hither to my foot, you great numb'd whelp,' said John. 
Chieftain came. John pointed with his finger to the ground : 
'Fetch that, I say — bring that back, away!' The dog 
scented slowly about on the ground for some seconds, but 
soon began to mend his pace, and vanished in the dark- 
ness. 'Bring her back — away, you great calf!' vociferated 
John, with a voice of exultation, as the dog broke to the 
hill ; and, as all these good dogs perform their work in per- 
fect silence, we neither saw nor heard any more of him for 
a long time. I think, if I remember right, we waited there 
about half an hour, during which time all the conversation 
was about the small chance which the dog had to find the 
ewe, for it was agreed on all hands that she must long ago 
have mixed with the rest of the sheep on the farm. How 
that was, no man will ever be able to decide. John, how- 
ever, still persisted in waiting until his dog came back, 
either with the ewe or without her ; and at last the trusty 
animal brought the individual lost sheep to our very feet, 
which the man took on his back, and went on his way re- 
joicing." 



An Odd Fish. 



In the waters of British North America, as we are in- 
formed, there is a fish, an odd fish, as surprising in its way 
as the sea serpent, and infinitely more useful. It is a spe- 
cies of smelt, and may be poetically described as an aquatic 
glow-worm. We are told it may be literally used in the 
same way as a candle, by simply setting a light to the tail, 
when it will burn with a flame as steady as that of the 
'dips' which our grandfathers used to have to put up with 
before gas was invented. It is a small, silvery fish, aver- 



ANIMAL STORIES. 4:9 

aging about fourteen inches long, is excessively fat, and 
aflfords an excellent and valuable oil, which is so inflamma- 
ble that the dried carcass will serve as a torch. Among the 
natives the fish is known as the colahan, and by them, as 
by others who have tasted it, is considered one of the most 
delicious products of the sea, being far more delicate in 
flavor than the herring. The fish are caught in wicker 
baskets, and are smoked as much as their oily nature will 
allow. 



Capturing Orangs in Borneo. 

Mr. "W. H. Hornaday, a celebrated traveler, describes 
one of his orang hunts as follows : 

"I got one orang alive during my stay in Borneo. He 
was a young one — n3t larger than an 8 or 10 year-old boy. 
When we discovered him he was in a tree which stood out 
alone by itself. The darkies cut. the tree down, and there 
he was. We had forked sticks all ready for him, and we 
put one of these over his neck, thus pinning him down to 
the ground. I would rather have put my hand against a 
buzz-saw than into his mouth. He was as mad as a tiger, 
and he took no pains to conceal his ferocity. On the con- 
trary, he displayed it to the very best advantage. After 
we had secured him safely, we tantalized him just to see 
how far he would go in his anger. He actually became so 
enraged that he took one of his own fingers between his 
teeth and bit it through to the solid bone ! 

Then, when we got him into the boat, he managed to 
get hold of one of the fingers of his dead mother, lying be- 
side him, and bit that quite as fiercely as he had his own. 
I tied a rope around his neck and took him to headquarters. 
There I assigned him to a bath-room, where he could have 
everything his own way. But he was surly, and wouldn't 



60 ANIMAL STOKIES. 

eat much of anything, thoufijh I did my level best to keep 
him supplied with the dehcacies of the season, and especially 
with boiled rice, which is deemed good for the orangoutang 
when in captivity. But he only hung upon the rafters with 
those long arms of his, and wouldn't eat, except when he 
tried to eat me. I couldn't induce him to become an ad- 
mirer of mine, and he pined away, as orangoutangs always 
do in captivity. Their disposition seems to be such that 
they prefer death to bondage, and this is probably the rea- 
son they are so seldom seen even in the best of menageries. 
One night we heard a heavy thud in the bath-room, and 
when we went in to see what was the matter, there lay the 
little mias, whose own obstinacy had been the death of him." 



Extraordinary Affection. 
The mutual love of a rooster and a dog in Avon is re- 
corded by The Rochester Union as follows : The rooster 
is known by the name of "Dick," to which he responds 
very readily when called by his owner. The dog's name 
is "Sandy." He is a mongrel with considerable of the 
terrier in him, and endowed with more than usual inteUi- 
gence. It seems that when the rooster "Dick" was a very 
young chicken he took to the dog " Sandy," who returned 
the aifection warmly, and cared for the little fowl with all 
the tenderness possible. "When the dog went to sleep at 
night, "Dick" would snug up to him, and thus obtain the 
warmth of his body. Since then they have been constant 
associates and playmates, the rooster not seeming to care 
a particle for the company of other roosters or hens, while 
the dog preferred to play with "Dick" rather than with 
animals of his own kind. "Sandy" allows "Dick" to 
perch on his back, while he lays stretched between two 
chairs, and the rooster succeeds in sticking on while the 
dog leaps from one chair to another. 



ANIMAL STORIES. 51 

Hounds Outrun by a Hare. 
The London Telegraph savs : It lias often been debated 
whetlier the fleetness and stoutness of a good hare are 
greater than those of a first-class grejhoun.l. The best 
hares in England are said to be those on the wolds of the 
East Eiding of Yorkshire, and here it was that the cele- 
brated Maj. Topham, of Wold cottage, near Malton, loved 
to maintain that he could find a hare any morning capable 
of showing her heels to the best pair of greyhounds that 
were ever slipped, even though his own champion dog, 
Snowball, were in the leash. Not long before Maj. Top- 
ham's death, in 1820, a boastful lover of the leash came to 
Malton to pass a few days with the owner of "Wold cottage. 
The visitor talked loudly of the marvelous superiority of 
two greyhounds which he had brought with him, and when 
Mi.j. Topham expressed his opinion that on the morrow he 
would find a hare which his friend's greyhounds could not 
touch, a bet of 20 guineas to 1 was laid by the backer of 
the dogs against a hare whose form was well known to the 
major, seeing that he had often slipped Snowball in pursuit 
of her, and always without success. On the morrow the 
hare was found in her usual seat in a fallow field, and away 
she went, keeping to the top of the ridge, while the two 
dogs in pursuit ran in the furrows, one to the right and the 
other to the left of the ridge, along which the quarry held 
her flying course. At first it seemed that the dogs were 
gaining upon her, since the hare is the most cunning of all 
animals which trust to their speed for safety. Shortly, she 
ran through a hedge which bounded the fallow field, and 
which the two dogs fiew in their stride. But having left 
the hedge behind her, the hare knew well that the moment 
had arrived for putting on the speed. A broad down, with 
crisp grass, and sloping g.'utlj upward for three miles, was 
before her, and here it w is thai: upon many previous occa- 



52 



A-NIMAL SI OKIES. 



sions she liaa left Maj. Topham's best dogs lar in the lurch. 
Carefully watching her pursuers, she then began to increase 
her speed, and before a mile was traversed the two dogs 
were beaten off two hundred yar Js. As it is the peculiar- 
ity of greyhounds, or gazehounds, that they abandon the 
pursuit when they can do longer see the animal they arc 
chasing, Maj. Topham was inexpressibly entertained when 
his friend's dogs were observed to stop and raise themselves 
on their long hind-legs, as is their fashion when unsighted. 
When the major and the friend came up with them, they 
were standing with their tongues out and looking at each 
other, while the flying hare was at the top of the hill. Not 
long afterward she was shot by a neighbor from behind a 
hedge, to the great mortification of the major, who vowed 
that no dog that was ever born could live with her upon the 
Yorkshire wolds. She was carefully weighed after death, 
and was found to weigh ten and a half pounds. Such was 
her fame that a well-known sporting writer of the past, who, 
under the nom de plume of Martingale, was a constant con- 
tributor some forty years since to The Doncaster Gazette^ 
openly avowed his belief that, "on a comparison of the 
speed of the hare with that of the greyhound, the fleetest 
hare will defeat the fleetest doe;." 



Saw the Elephant and Died. 

That there is a limit to elephantine endurance was proved 
long ago by the dismal drenching administered to a certain 
tailor of Delhi, whose excessive hardiness with the needle 
prompted him to offer gratuitous and unprovoked insult to 
a huge pachyderm which obtruded the tip of its trunk upon 
his notice as he sat in his shop-window. A still more ter- 
rible reprisal than this has recently been exercised by a 
vexed elephant upon an imprudent person who trifled witii 



ANIMAL hTOKIES, 53 

the colossal beast's appetite until he provoked it to un- 
governable fury. The elephant in question constituted the 
''great attraction" of a traveling menagerie that arrived 
in Amsterdam and was permitted to camp out in one of the 
public gardens there. An old gentleman, inspired by the 
elephant's amiable expression of countenance, with the con- 
viction that "Maharajah" would stand any amount of 
teasing, proceeded to offer a tempting lump of bread to the 
animal, deftly withdrawing it, however, beyond the reach 
of Maharajah's trunk each time that receptacle was thrust 
forth to grasp it. This jocular performance having been 
repeated several times, the elephant suddenly stepped for- 
ward close to the side of the railing, seized his tormentor's 
body in his trunk, lifted him clean over the barrier inter- 
posing between them, and hurled him to the ground. 
Having got his enemy down, Maharajah trod upon him 
with such vindictive vehemence that, when the "much too 
merry" old gentleman was finally got out of the enclosure, 
he wa^s dead. 



Poisonous Fishes. 

Poisonous fishes are often alluded to in ancient works, 
and it is but due to their authors to say that their state- 
ments have been fully confirmed by subsequent inquiry 
into results. There is no doubt that congers, pike, and 
barbel have been long, and still are, recognized in Europe 
as poisonous at ceHain seasons, and the roe of the barbel 
especially so. 

The symptoms usually observed in cases of poisoning of 
this kind are nausea, colic, great heat and itching of the 
skin, quick pulse, giddiness, loss of vision, cold clammy 
perspiration, and finally death under convulsions. The 
exact nature of the poison has yet been but little ascer- 



54 ANIMAL STORIES. 

tained. It has been ascribed bj some to the feeding of the 
fish on poisonous mollusca, by some to the disengagement 
of sulphuretted hydrogen, and by others again to a par- 
ticular specific venom not yet discovered by chemical anal- 
ysis. Whether the fish possesses that poisonous quality at 
all seasons is not sufficiently known ; but it seems that 
most species belonging to the tribe are equally noxious, for 
V. Osbeck, in his " Yoyage to China and the East Indies," 
gives the following startling account of the Tetraodon 
ocelatus of Linnaeus : "This fish is one of the finest I ever 
saw, but so poisonous that whoever eats of it generally 
dies in two hours time. The Chinese who affirmed the 
fact, seeing me take the fish into my hands, earnestly de- 
sired me to wash myself, adding that it is forbidden under 
some great penalty to be sold among other fish." 

Dr. Stuart Eldridge states that the salmon is doubtless 
the most common toxic fish of Japan. From the spring 
onward this fish is out of season, and if eaten after that 
period of the year occasions such accidents as the eating of 
tainted meat. In Japan the like dangers follow the eating 
of the kateuo (bonito) and the maguro. The Lethrinus 
nambo can be eaten with impunity until it attains a certain 
size — say a length of five to five and a half inches — after 
which it becomes poisonous. Here then it would appear 
that the age of the fish has something to do with its in- 
jurious qualities. Pappenheim gives a list of more than 
forty poisonous species, principally inhabitants of the torrid 
zone. Among these we find mackerels, perches, herrings, 
and sea pikes. 

A Spider Story. 
To put the ingenuity of the spider to the test, a gentle- 
man frequently placed one on a small upright stick, and 
surrounded the base with water. After having discovered 



ANIMAL STORIES. 55 

that the ordinary means of* retreat are cut off, it ascends 
the point of the stick, and, standing nearly on its head, 
ejects its web, which the wind readily carries to some con- 
tiguous object. Along this the sagacious insect effects its 
escape, not, however, until it has ascertained, by several 
exertions of its whole strength, that its web is properly 
attached to the other end. 



A Struggle with a Devil-Fish. 

Mr. Smale, the Government diver, who was attacked by 
a large octopus, or devil fish, while at work recently on the 
bed of the Moyne Eiver, at Belfast, in the Colony of Vic- 
toria, gives this account of the affair: " Having thrust my 
arm into a hole, I found it was held by something, and 
the action of the water was stirring up the loose clay, and, 
therefore, I could not see distinctly for a few minutes ; but 
when it did clear away, I saw to my horror the arm of a 
large octopus entwined around mine like a boa-constrictor, 
and just then he fixed some of his suckers on the back of 
my hand, and the pain was intense. I felt as if my hand 
was being pulled to pieces, and the more I tried to take it 
away the greater the pain became. I had the greatest 
difficulty in keeping my feet down, as the air rushed along 
the interior of my dress and inflated it ; and if my feet had 
got uppermost I should soon have become insensible held 
in such a position ; and, also if I had given the signal to be 
pulled up, the brute would have held on, and the chances 
would have been that I should have had a broken arm. I 
had a hammer with me, but could not reach down to use it 
on the brute. There was a small iron bar about five feet 
from me, and with my foot 1 dragged this along until I 
could reach it with my left hand. And now the fight com- 



56 



ANIMAL STORIES. 



menced, and the more 1 struck him the tighter he squeezed, 
until my arm got quite benumbed. After a while I found 
the grip to relax a little, but he held on till I had almost 
cut him to pieces, and then he relaxed his hold from the 
rock and I pulled him up. I was completely exhausted, 
having been in that position for over twenty minutes. I 
brought the animal up, or rather, a part of it. We laid 
him out, and he measured over eight feet across, and I feel 
perfectly convinced that this fellow could have held down 
five or six men." 



Bismarck's Big Dog. 

One of the most important and generally respected mem- 
bers of Prince Bismarck's household is a large hound, 
popularly designated the "Realm-Dog." This animal — 
his mighty master's inseparable companion — is stern of as- 
pect and wrathful in disposition. He inspires fear, rather 
than love, in all men save one, and has acquired a somewhat 
formidable renown for having "collared " several eminent 
personages, — among them Prince Gortschakoff, — whose 
appearance inspired him with distrust, or in whom his in- 
stincts revealed to him the entertainment of hostile pur- 
pose toward his lord. For his extraordinary intelligence 
in this respect he is highly prized by the Chancellor, who 
is known to entertain considerable faith in the accuracy of 
the Realm-Dog's judgment of human character. Two 
delegates from Altona, charged with the presentation of a 
petition from that town to his Highness, were received by 
Prince Bismarck in special audience. The Chancellor sat 
in his comfortable rocking chair, the Realm-Dog stretched 
on the carpet by his side, while the delegates, Messrs. 
Nothnagel and Semple, took their seats on a leathern couch 
facing his Highness. Messrs. Nothnagel held a roll of 



ANIMAL STOKIES. 57 

paper in his right hand, and, being an energetic speaker, 
accustomed to emphasize his argument bj gesticulation, he 
waved his scroll about while addressing the Chancellor, 
disregardful of the fact that his movements elicited several 
disapproving utterances from the watchful hound. Present- 
ly the dog rose with a fierce growl, whereupon Prince 
Bismarck, hastily interrupting his interlocutor's remarks, 
exclaimed: "Do put down that scroll, I beg you. My 
dog, like myself, entertains a profound aversion to every 
kind of paper. He believes it to be a weapon." It is 
needless to add that Mr. Nothnagel promptly complied 
with the request, obviously to the satisfaction of the Kealm- 
Dog, who forthwith subsided into his former peaceful 
attitude. 



An Encounter with a Shark. 

An adventure had by Captain David L. Longstreet of 
Seabright, N. J., has made him quite a hero. Captain 
Longstreet didn't catch the sea-serpent ; far from it, for he 
was caught very nearly himself, as the following account 
of his experience will show. Accompanied by a fellow-fish- 
erman, Longstreet cast anchor off the rocks, in ten fathoms 
ot water, at dawn on Thursdr.y, aiid for five or six hours 
hauled in bluefish and sea bass without noteworthy inter- 
ruption. The day was fine, the sea was right, and the trail 
was strong. Suddenly the fish stopped biting. Longstreet 
was unable to account for the phenomenon, but while think- 
ing it over he felt the strong pull of a bluefish at his hook. 
At the same instant he saw the dorsal fin of a shark close 
by the boat. The shark's tail churned the water into foam 
twelve feet behind the fin. 

When the shark snapped at the bluefish which Long- 
street was pulling to the boat, he could see that it was not 



58 ANIMAL STORIES. 

the common shark, but the black shark, or dreaded man- 
eater. Longstreet continues : "I let go of my line, but 
the bluefish darted straight for the boat, slipping under it 
and escaping. The shark following closelj with open 
mouth, plunged his nose through the 'tuck' of the boat, 
about a foot forward of the stern, and his under jaw closed 
on the keel with a crash like the cut of an ax in a dry tree 
trunk. Water spurted into the boat. The shock threw me 
headforemost out of the boat. I sank, and as I rose I felt 
that I was being kept under by the agitation of the water 
by the shark's tail, which stirred the water like the propel- 
ler of a tug. But I struck out vigorously, and, to my 
horror, came to the surface alongside the tail of the shark. 
I put out my hand before I fully realized wliere I was, and 
touched his cold body, and I remember I thought, ' How 
hard and strong this is !' 

"As I turned to swim towards the boat my right foot 
struck his long tail, and here is the mark of the contact. As 
soon as I got to swimming I felt at ease. I didn't seem to 
realize, as I do now, the horrible fate that awaited me if 
the struggling monster alongside of me got his head clear 
of the hole in the boat. But I expected every moment to 
see him turn and snap me up as he would a weak fish. I 
climbed into the boat, helping myself by putting my knee 
on the shark's back." Meanwhile the other fisherman had 
been shouting for help, and a reliei boat soon approached, 
the struggling shark freeing itself and escaping." 



A Snake Fight. 



While the Rev. J. H. McGahen was driving on his way 
one day to Fulton, N. Y., as he reached a small stream of 
water which crosses the road, he was permitted to witness 



AJSIMAX STORIES. 59 

a scene both novel and interesting. Mr. McGahen thus 
describes the contest : 

Two large water-snakes were contending for the posses- 
sion of a small fish which had been captured (the fish be- 
ing about eight inches iu length), while two smaller snakes, 
one on each side of the contestants, with heads slightly 
raised above the water, were apparently interested specta- 
tors to the struggle, but neither interfered. One of the 
larger snakes had seized the fish by the head, while the 
other grasped him by the tail, the former of course having 
much the better hold, owing to the tapering form of the 
fish ; but it was a long pull and a strong pull ; the water 
was lashed into quite a fury'^; the snake with the tail-hold 
wound himself twice around a small stick fastened near him, 
giving him quite an advantage over his antagonist. 

After a desperate struggle of about five minutes, the 
snake with the head-hold wrested the contested prey from 
his opponent, and bore it rapidly away up the stream in tri- 
umph, while his vanquished snakeship, crestfallen, supperless 
and subdued, slunk away out of sight. It was an intensely 
exciting performance, but probably not a very pleasing one 
to the poor fish, 

A Parrot Scattering Railroad Passengers. 

At the Henry House, Meadville, Pa., there is a parrot 
which is a source of great annoyance to train men. When 
it sees a freight train coming it will yell at the top of its 
voice: " Switch off ! Switch off!" The enunciation is so 
distinct that it not unfrequently happens that the train will 
be switched to avoid a supposed danger. The same bird, 
when it sees a passenger train, will yell, "All aboard!" 
and thereby cause a scattering among the passengers, who, 
after sitting in the cars for ten or fifteen minutes, will dis- 
cover that they have been sold. 



60 ANIMAL STORIES. 

The Pigeons of Venice. 

Everybody has heard of the pigeons which flock daily to 
the famous Square of St. Mark's, iu Yenice, to be fed, and 
many Americans have, no doubt, seen them resting upon 
the shoulders and arms of the woman who dispenses their 
daily bread to them. Many are the stories told of their 
origin ; how their ancestors served the republic by bringing 
back news from its fleets, and so on ; but none of them are 
very well established, except that the birds have always 
been regarded as town property, and have been fed out of 
a fund set apart for that purpose, which is now said to have 
been a donation from the Countess Policrasto. Until lately 
it would have been thought little less than sacrilege to 
touch a feather of them, but recently a Yenetian boy was 
discovered carrying ofi* a pigeon, evidently with a view to 
pie. The case was carried into court, where it was decided 
that the pigeons had never been legally conveyed to the 
town, consequently they were nobody's property, but, so to 
speak, wild fowl, and that boy was only following his 
natural instincts in catching them, and must be acquitted. 



The Boss Snake. 



Says the St. Louis Post- Dispatch: A gentleman who is 
ordinarily truthful sends us the following extraordinary 
snake story from Lebanon, Mo., the reader being left to 
judge of its accuracy; 

"Last Friday terrible havoc was done on the farm of 
Henry Miller, in the vicinity of Lebanon. About 3 o'clock 
in the afternoon, Mr. Miller, who was conversing with the 
Rev. James Albery, a Methodist minister, heard a tremen- 
dous uproar in the direction of a hog-pen in which was con- 
fined a sow with a litter of ten young ones. The preacher 
and farmer rushed out to the pen, when they were thunder- 



ANIMAL STUKIES. (31 

struck with amazement. A gigantic snake, apparently fifty 
feet long, had raised itself erect and was looking down on 
the terror-stricken hogs. Presently several young snakes, 
ranging from a foot to a foot and a half in length, sprang 
from the snake's mouth and began attacking the litter. 
The monster, with a continuous hissing roar, stretched out 
three frightful-looking fangs, which were from four to five 
feet in length, and advanced toward the hog, which stood 
in a corner trembling in every limb, unable to move, as if 
fascinated by the immense snake. 

"Meanwhile Mr. Miller had rushed to his house, seized 
his shot-gun, and just as the gigantic beast \?as about to 
dart on his prey, fired. The shot did not appear to have 
any efiect, but the monster quickly raised itself, turned in 
the direction of the shot, stretched forth his formidable 
fangs, and emitted a noxious vapor almost as nauseating as 
asafoetida. Then it give a low, hissing wail, upon which 
signal the several young snakes leaped into the maternal 
maw, and the huge serj)ent took to flight. Mr. Miller fired 
again. The snake trailed itself with immense rapidity. 
The two men followed the trail and called for assistance, 
but when they got to the wood they lost all trace of it. A. 
body of men surrounded the wood an hour later with guns 
and revolvers, and beat the bush thoroughly. The snake 
had disappeared. Great alarm is felt in the vicinity. Four 
of the litter were killed by the young snakes. 

" Mr. Albery, the Methodist preacher, was in town yes- 
terday, and was interviewed by your correspondent. He 
affirmed the correctness of the above story. He described 
the monster as between forty and fifty feet in length, with 
a flattened head, the size of a large beer keg, two lustrous, 
flaming eyes, and three terrible-looking fangs. The body 
was all covered with a sort of scales, resembling those of a 
fish, which glistened like silver. The tail was about nine 



62 ANIMAL STOKIES. 

feet long, was divided into two parts, and apparently was 
-extremely flexible. When the snake was agitated it gave 
forth a hissing roar. But the most striking feature was two 
mammoth wings which lay along the sides of the serpent 
like a very long umbrella, about fifteen feet in length. 
Neither Mr. Albery nor Mr. Miller knew there were wings 
until in making its escape the animal suddenly extended 
them. They were something similar to the wings of a bat 
and were almost transparent. Each wing, when extended, 
must have had a surface of at least 140 feet. With their 
aid the animal leaped over a fence seven feet high. It was 
at this point that the snake became lost to view, and only 
its trail was discernible in the tall reeds. Both the Rev. 
Mr. Albery and farmer Miller are reputable, honest, and 
truth-loving persons, who stand high in the community, 
and both vouch for the truth of this story. Indeed, Mr. 
Miller has made an affidavit thereto." 



A Teasing Parrot. 

A lady on Seneca street, says a Utica paper, is the 
owner of a small, frisky dog and a very talkative parrot. 
Occasionally Polly gets demorahzed, and, instead of behav- 
ing herself like a good lady bird should, she gives vent to 
terrible shrieks, and endeavors to be as bad as she possibly 
can. When she takes these spells, the dog, knowing that 
a reprimand is needed, goes to the cage and administers 
several severe rebukes in the shape of a savage little bark. 
Recently Poll sat upon her perch with all the dignity pos- 
sible. The dog was taking a nap in an adjoining room. 
Suddenly, without a moment's notice. Poll let loose two or 
three unearthly screeches. The dog was awakened, of 
course, and immediately started for the cage at a full run, 
barking as he went. After he had scolded, as he thought, 



ANIMAL STOEIES. C3 

enough he adjourned to the other room and snugged him- 
self for another snooze. He had no more than closed his 
ejes before Poll shrieked again, longer and louder than 
before. Up jumped the dog, and out he went barking 
furiously. When he reached the cage, Poll, who had 
stopped her noise to give the dog a chance, began to bark 
just as loud as her four-legged associate. Penny choked 
himself off and gazed on in holy horror. He stood looking 
at the cage for several minutes. Finally his tail dropped 
between his legs and he turned round and left the spot. 
Just as he was going out of the room Poll stopped barking, 
a sort of pleased expression crept down her jagged beak, 
and as the dog faded from view she yelled after him, 
"Good-by, Penny," and without further ado resumed her 
meditations upon her perch. 



The Prophecy of a Greyhound. 

Eichard II., of England, had a greyhound called Mach, 
beautiful beyond measure, who would not notice or follow 
any one but the King. Whenever the King rode abroad 
the greyhound was loosed by the person who had him in 
charge, and ran instantly to caress him, by placing his two 
fore feet on his shoulders. It fell out that as the King 
and the Duke of Lancaster were conversing in the court of 
the castle, their horses being ready for them to mount, the 
greyhound was untied, but instead of running as usual to 
the King, he left him and leaped to the Duke of Lancas- 
ter's shoulders, paying him every court, and caressing him 
as he used to caress the King. The Duke, not acquainted 
with this greyhound, asked the King the meaning of his 
Iness, saying : 

" What does this mean ?" 



64 ANIMAL SIOKIES. 

" Cousin," replied the King, " It means a great deal for 
you and very little for me." 

" How?" said the Duke. " Pray explain it." 

"I understand by it," answered the King, "that this 
greyhound fondles and pays his court to you this day, as 
King of England, which you will surely be, and I shall be 
deposed ; for the natural instinct of the dog shows it to him. 
Keep him, therefore, by your side, for he will now leave 
me and follow you." 

The Duke of Lancaster treasured up what the King said, 
and paid attention to the greyhound, who would nevermore 
follow Richard of Bordeaux, but kept by the side of the 
Duke of Lancaster, as was witnessed by thirty thousand 
men. — Chronicles of Froissart. 



A Cat Story. 



Joel D. Havans, living north of Battle Creek, in Barry 
county, Mich., has in his possession a most remarkable 
cat. A short time ago it had a litter of kittens, which were 
all drowned except one. The bereaved feline mother, 
coming across a nest of young rats that day, took the young 
rodents by the neck, deposited them in her own nest, and 
nursed and fondled them as affectionately as though they 
were her own flesh and blood. Another cat on the place, 
in the absence of this adopted mother, caught and killed two 
of these young rats, but the remaining one is as sleek and 
fat, and takes as kindly to the old cat as though there were 
ties of relationship. The cat will fight as quickly to protect 
this young rat as it will for its remaining kitten. 



ANIMAL STOEIES. 65 

Henry Clay's Dog. 

Mr. Clay had a fine Newfoundland dog that was pre- 
sented by an admiring friend who lived in Nova Scotia. 
The dog was very intelligent, and the " Sage of Ashland " 
trained him with his own hand to perform a number of 
wonderful tricks, one of which is as follows : In one 
of the pastures in which Mr. Clay allowed his finest 
stock to run was a fine well, with a large trough attached, 
by means of which the cattle were supplied with water. 
The water was drawn from the well by the bucket-and- 
spindle system, but it required a great deal of manual labor 
to keep it in operation. 

To avoid this Mr. Clay constructed a small treadmill, at- 
tached it to the spindle of the well with an iron crank, and 
then trained the dog to walk the treadmill. In this man- 
ner the trough was kept constantly filled with water, and 
the clever dog became so accustomed to the performance 
that, without the necessity of being bid, he made it his duty 
to watch the well constantly and see that the trough always 
had in it a sufiicient supply of water to keep the coppers of 
the blooded stock cool. 

Mr. Clay loved the dog, and was fond of watching him 
go through the performance. He would always have the 
performance exhibited to his visitors, and when the good 
old canine finally gave up the ghost he had him respectfully 
buried, and erected at the head of his grave an elegant 
marble slab. 





**^*iv>^^5^' 



MISCELLANY. 



Curiosities of Animal Liife. 

The distinguished Leibnitz relates an instance of animal 
education which is quite exceptional. A countryman, liv- 
ing near Zecta, in Misnia, owned a dog of medium size ia 
which was discovered a disposition to speak — at least, he 
uttered sounds which so far resembled words in the Ger- 
man tongue that one of the children of the family conceived 
the extraordinary idea of teaching him to talk. In two 
years time the young teacher was so far successful as to 
have taught the dog to correctly pronounce thirty words. 

M. Delafond speaks of a German who had educated six 
rats to a surprising degree. They answered to their names 
with promptitude, and saluting their spectators with arch 
grace, executed a score of exercises with much cleverness 
and quick obedience. 

An Englishman by the name of Wildham, in 1774, had 
the patience to educate several hives of bees and wasps. 
He displayed a comb full of these insects, and in the space 
of two minutes caused them to settle upon the hat of one of 
the spectators. Thence he caused them to alight upon his 
naked arm and form a muff. They next settled upon his 
head and face, on which they made a kind of mask. They 
then marched upon a table according to his orders. That 
which was most extraordinary in the talents of this singu- 
lar man was that he could make the same experiments with 



68 MISCELLANEOUS 

whatever swarm was ofi'ered to him, and even with wasps 
and flies, and that he himself was never in any danger of 
being stung. 

Both the mocking-bird and the parrot reproduce with 
amazing fidelity not only spoken language, with its many- 
syllabled words and complex sentences, but also the multi- 
tudinous sounds and voices of other animals, strains of mu- 
sic, the blowing of whistles, and the various ringing of 
bells. More than this, there is observable a distinct and 
unmistakable language among the lower animals. Birds 
chirp and twitter slower or faster in the communication of 
their desires to one another ; the horse neighs variously, 
and the dog expresses by twenty different snarls, and 
growls, and barks, as many shades of feeling, which ideas 
are understood and responded to by those of his kind to 
whom they are addressed. 

It may be , said of the lower animals that, unlike their 
masters, their virtues are somewhat in excess of their vices. 
Says Mr. Darwin : 

"There can be no doubt that dogs feel shame as distinct 
from fear, and sometimes very like modesty when begging 
too often for food. A great dog scorns the barking of a lit- 
tle dog, and this may be called magnanimity." 

As to love, it seems with most of our dumb companions 
to be all of a passion, as is instanced by every-day experi- 
-^nce, and the record of attachments that were strong and 
enduring as life. The maternal affection is cherished by 
the brute world to a degree of heroism. There are in- 
■stances where the dumb parent has starved herself to death 
in her desperate efforts to supply her offspring with food ; 
•others, where she has fought for them until killed ; and 
others, where she has died of grief because of the destruc- 
tion or disappearance of her infant family. 

Gratitude is a leading and very remarkable principle in 



ANECDOTES. Dif 

the brute, especially expressed by the elephant and the 
dog. Constancy and devotion follow, and with real mag- 
nanimity they will receive good and evil of the same hand, 
and fulfill every duty with the same unswerving fidelity. 
These animals have been known to defend their masters 
directly after being abused by them, and from a sense of 
duty, a greyhound, after having broken his thigh, has run 
on till the course was concluded. 

Courage and fear are exhibited by animals with singular 
variation, and while some are brave by inheritance, others 
are by example. Like human cowards, some animals will 
shamefully run when they can, and only fight when they 
must. Animals exhibit both dignity and pride, and often 
express profound displeasure at insults and uncleanliness. 
Patience under restraint, industry and moderation, are dis- 
tinctive animal virtues. Most species will not only refuse 
to eat a bite more than nature requires, but it is mentioned 
of a dog, that having once been made intoxicated, he ever 
afterward snarled when a pewter-pot was even brought into 
his presence. 

The principle of perseverance finds many illustrations in 
brute life. Bobert Bruce is said to have observed a spider 
make repeated efi'orts to reach, with his web, a given point 
on one of the rafters of a barn, the thirteenth and last time 
succeeding. An ant was once remarked to fail in sixty- 
nine consecutive attempts to round a sharp corner of a cor- 
nice with a burden, but in making the seventieth efibrt the 
persevering little creature achieved his end. 

A singular sensitiveness is expressed by many animals. 
Monkeys decidedly dislike being laughed at, and dogs and 
horses are conscious of much slighter injuries than, at first 
thought, is conceived. A baboon in the London Zoological 
Garden is insulted to the extent of a rage, when his keep- 
er reads aloud a letter or book in his presence, and at one 



70 MISCELLAJS'EOUS 

time, so violent was his fit, he bit his own leg until the 
blood flowad. 

The faculty of memory seems to be possessed by all ani- 
mals, and by some to an astonishing extent. Three years 
after the perpetration of a certain crime, a Newfoundland 
dog singled out the murderer of his master from a vast con- 
course of people, and grasping him by the throat, with ter- 
rible vengence, would have shortly killed him. The con- 
duct of the dog resulted in bringing the criminal to a justice 
which else might have escaped him. 

Upon the occasion of a visit of a menagerie to a village, 
one of the elephants was given, fresh from the mouth of 
one of the bystanders, a quid of tobacco. The brute spat 
it upon the ground with evident disgust, and looked rue- 
fully at its donor, who stepped out of his reach. Two 
years afterward the exhibition revisited the same place, 
when the tobacco man, passing suflticiently near the ele- 
phant, was struck a very severe blow by the trunk of the 
ofiended beast. 

Animals never forget even general acquaintances, much 
less their masters, and some bear a grudge for an incredibly 
long period. 

Our dumb friends very generally profit by experience, as 
is proven by the fact that when once deceived by a trap, 
ever after avoid such. For this reason young animals are 
more frequently caught by trappers than old ones. All of 
the brute creation feel wonder and curiosity, and most of 
them are expert imatators. 

Though monkeys are perhaps the representatives of the 
latter class, it is largely found also among canary birds, 
parrots, dogs, horses, and even rats. It is not an uncom- 
mon practice for a dog to jump up at the handle of a door 
as if to open it. A chimpanzee will use a stone to crack a 
nut, and these and baboons will fight one another with 



ANECDOTES. 71 

sticks in hand-to-hand encounters, and exercise the strategy 
or rolling stones upon the heads of the enemy from heights 
above. Puppies have been known to lick their feet and 
wash their faces after the manner of their foster mothers. 

The brute creation feel and express anger as distinctly as 
humans, and are susceptible to the bitterest hatred, if not 
revenge. Elephants, and especially dogs, are also jealous, 
sometimes to a degree of envy, and until they are a burden 
to themselves. All animals are more or less selfish, very 
generally looking out for number one, and though they 
rarely become gluttons, they have been known to eat what 
they did not want only to prevent any other animal from 
possessing it. 

Some Singular Aversions. 

Gretry, the composer, could not endure the scent of the 
rose, neither could Anne of Austria. The mere sight of 
the queen of fl.owers was too much for Lady Heueage, bed- 
chamber woman to Queen Bess ; indeed, Kenelm Digby 
records that her cheeks became blistered when some one 
laid a white rose upon it as she slept. Her ladyship's an- 
tipathy was almost as strong as that of the dame who faint- 
ed when her lover approached her wearing an artificial rose 
in his button-hole. A violet was a thing of horror to the 
eyes of the Princess de Lamballe ; tansy was abominable to 
an Earl of Barrymore ; Scahger grew pale before the wa- 
ter-cress ; and a soldier, who would have scorned to turn 
his back on a foe, fled without shame from a sprig of rue. 

The Secretary of Francis I. used to stop up his nostrils 
with bread if he saw a dish of apples, to prevent an other- 
wise inevitable bleeding at the nose. A Polish King had 
an antipathy to both the smell and sight of this wholesome 
fruit, and a family of Aquitaine had a hereditary hatred of 
it. A Flemish damsel was sadly troubled by an uncom- 



T2 MISCELLANEOUS 

fortable aversion to the smell of bread. Cheese, mutton, 
musk, and ambergris have been so repugnant to some nasal 
organs as to send their owners into convulsions. 

A poor Neapolitan was always seized with a fit upon at- 
tempting to swallow a morsel of fresh meat of any kind, 
and Nature thus condemed him to vegetarianism, a sorer 
affliction than that suffered by Guianerius, whose heart 
palpitated violently if he indulged in a pork dinner, or by 
the lady who could not taste of beer without her lips swel- 
ling to uncomfortable dimensions. Dr. Front had a patient 
who declared honest mutton was as bad as poison to him. 
Thinking this was all fancy, the Doctor administered the 
obnoxious meat under various disguises, but every experi- 
ment ended in a severe vomiting fit. 

Another unlucky individual always had a fit of the gout 
a few hours after eating fish ; and a Count d'Armstadt 
never failed to go off in a faint if he knowingly or unknow- 
ingly partook of a dish containing the slightest modicum of 
olive oil. A still worse penalty attatched to lobster salad 
in the case of a lady, for, if she ventured to taste it at a 
dinner-party, her neck, before she returned to the ball- 
room, would be covered with ugly blotches, and her peace 
of mind destroyed for that evening. 

According to Burton, a melancholy Duke of Muscovy fell 
instantly ill if he looked upon a woman ; and another au- 
thority was seized with a cold palsy under similar provoca- 
tion. "Weinrichur talks of a nobleman who drew the 
line at old ladies, which did not prevent him losing his life 
in consequence of his strange prejudice ; for being called 
from the supper-table by some mischievous friends to speak 
to an old woman, he fell down directly he beheld her, and 
died then and there. What an old woman did for this old 
hater, an eclipse did for Charles d'Escaro, Bishop of Lan- 
gres. It was his inconvenient custom to faint at the com- 



ANECDOTES. 73 

mencement of a lunar eclipse, and remain insensible as 
long as it lasted. When he was very old and very infirm 
an eclipse took place. The good Bishop went off as usual, 
and never came to again. Old John Langley, who settled 
in Ireland in 1651, cherished an antipathy quite as obstin- 
ately, but had no idea of dying of it. By his last will and 
testament he ordered his corpse to be waked by fifty Irish- 
men, for each of whom two quarts of aqua vitse were to be 
provided, "in the hope that, getting drunk, they would 
take to killing one another, and do something toward les- 
sening the race ." — Chamber^ s Jovmal. 



Some Very Remarkable Statistics ! 

A Detroiter has been for the last two years collecting 
and arranging statistics of an odd nature, and if his book is 
ever published readers will find nothing dry about it. He 
goes right to business on page 1 by estimating that the 
number of lickings received by the average boy up to his 
14:th year is 125. This includes the spanking process dur- 
ing infancy. 

Out of every 100,000 people in this country, 19,000 get 
up cross in the morning, but only a hundred or so remain 
in that condition very long after breakfast. 

Out of 50,000 men only 600 will put up money on a bet. 
The rest will crawfish around and finally back water on 
their assertions. 

Only 10 women out of every 500 who start out on a jour- 
ney by railroad consult a railroad-map or have the least 
idea of the direction they take. Four hundred and ninety- 
eight worry about their baggage ; 497 are certain they took 
the wrong train ; 494 wish they never had started. 

The risk of being bitten by a dog is greatly overestimated. 
Out of every 1,000 big and little dogs only two care to get 



74 MISCELLANEOUS. 

up a row with the human race, and those two are ready and 
willing to die. 

The number of men who can put in a more pleasant 
evening down-town than at their own fireside is on the de- 
crease, and the number of wives who are taking a little ex- 
tra pains to make home more pleasant than a concert-saloon 
is on the increase. 

Out of every 1,000 men who get mad and swear they 
will see a lawyer about it, only fifteen carry out their in- 
tentions. 

Out of every 1,000 women who ride on street-cars, only 
twelve will move along to ofier another woman a chance to 
sit down. Nine hundred and ninety-eight of them argue 
that it is a man's duty to stand up, even if there is plenty 
of room ; and the other two are supremely indifferent. 

Only one woman in 5,000 pays the first price asked for a 
bonnet, and only one milliner in 1,000,000 expects her to. 

The time occupied by the average man in buying a full 
suit of clothes is just one-fourth the time occupied by the 
average woman in buying a single pair of stockings. — De 
troit J^ree Press. 



THE Jf END. 



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esting and instructive book. 

Price, in Paper Coyers, 10 cents. 



OBIGIHr OF FAMIIilAR THi:WG!S. Bvc, 64 pages. Ed- 
ited by J. B. McClure. 

This book opens with the "Rise of the Hat," "Origin of Gloves," 
"House that Jack Built," "True Blue," "Hurrah," "Origin of Newspa- 
pers," "Yankee," "Hobson's Choice," "Bridal Veil," and other familiar 
expressions and things concerning whose "rise in the world" little is gener- 
ally known. It forms a decidedly interesting book. 

Price, in Paper Covers, 10 cents. 



AinmAIi STOBIE8. 8vo., 64 pages. Edited by J. B. McClure. 

This book is characterized by remarkable illustrations of the sagacity, 
alleged reasoning powers, instinct, and curious doings, in connection with 
the animal world. It also contains many thrilling adventures with wild 
in forest and jungle, thus proving a very readable book. 

Price, in Paper Coyers, 10 cents. 



[6] 
JSTARTIiUrG STORIES. 8vo., 64 pages. Edited by J. B 
• McClure. 

These stories relate to maay of the most remarkable events in nature and 
social life, including the fulfillment of dreams, strange coincidents, etc., 
which render the book unique and interesting. 

Price, in Paper Coyers, 10 centsi 



FUNNIEST BOOK OF Al^Ii. 8vo., 64 pages. By Mark 
Twain, Josh Billings, Detroit Free Press Man, Burlington Hawkeye 
Man, Brookljm Eagle Man, Oil City Derrick Man, and other brilliant 
wits. Many of their amusing sketches carry an important lesson 
which give to this book a peculiar, but an appropriate field. 

Price) in Paper CoTers, 10 cents. 



Any of the Above Books will be Sent by Mail, post 
paid, on receipt of the above prices. 



LIBERAL DISCOUNT TO THE TRADE. 



Rhodes & McClure, Publishers, 

methodist ohuech block, ohigago, ill. 






LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

027 249 780 1 



